The Resident Evil Movies Starring Milla Jovovich, Explained

Paul W. S. Anderson's six Resident Evil films ran from 2002 to 2016, with Milla Jovovich as Alice, a character made for the films who never appears in the games. Anderson wrote all six and directed four of them. They start in an Umbrella lab under Raccoon City and end with the world in ruins and Alice racing to release a cure. This page goes through each film in order, explains how Alice's story connects across them, and sets out where they break from the games. Full spoilers throughout. (Resident Evil (2002 film); Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

Before the story begins#

The films keep the games' basic setup and change almost everything else. The Umbrella Corporation is the world's biggest company, secretly making bioweapons, and its T-virus brings the dead back as zombies. Raccoon City is Umbrella's company town. There's no Spencer Mansion incident and no S.T.A.R.S. investigation to kick things off. Instead there's the Hive, a huge underground lab beneath the city, run by an artificial intelligence called the Red Queen. (Resident Evil (2002 film))

Resident Evil (2002)#

A thief steals the T-virus inside the Hive and smashes a vial on the way out. The Red Queen seals the facility and kills everyone inside to stop the virus spreading. Above ground, in the mansion that hides the Hive's entrance, Alice wakes in a bathroom with no memory. An Umbrella commando team storms the house, along with a man who says he's a police officer, Matt Addison, and takes them all down into the Hive. (Resident Evil (2002 film))

The Red Queen's laser defences kill several of the team. When they shut her down, the doors open and the dead staff come for them, along with a Licker. As her memory comes back, Alice remembers she was Umbrella security, posted at the mansion in a fake marriage with another operative, Spence, and that she'd been helping Matt's sister smuggle out proof of Umbrella's experiments. Spence turns out to be the thief. (Resident Evil (2002 film))

Only Alice and Matt make it out, and the Licker has wounded Matt. Umbrella scientists arrive, take both of them, and send Matt to something called the Nemesis Program. Alice wakes later strapped to a table in an empty hospital, walks outside and finds Raccoon City overrun. The full Resident Evil (2002) explainer covers the ending in detail. (Resident Evil (2002 film))

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)#

Directed by Alexander Witt. An Umbrella team reopens the Hive and the infection reaches the city. Umbrella seals Raccoon City off and lets the population die behind its walls. Jill Valentine, a disgraced S.T.A.R.S. officer, tries to get people out, and an Umbrella soldier, Carlos Olivera, is abandoned there with his unit. (Resident Evil: Apocalypse)

Alice now has speed and strength from the T-virus Umbrella put in her. A scientist, Charles Ashford, hacks into the city's cameras and offers the survivors a way out if they rescue his daughter Angela, who has a genetic condition that the virus was first designed to treat. Umbrella sends its new weapon, the Nemesis, after Alice. In the final fight she realises Nemesis is Matt. He turns on Umbrella and dies protecting her. (Resident Evil: Apocalypse)

The survivors escape by helicopter as a nuclear bomb destroys Raccoon City, and the blast brings them down. Alice is killed saving Angela, and Umbrella recovers her body. She wakes in an Umbrella lab with new psychic powers and breaks out with the others, but the man in charge, Dr Isaacs, lets her go. Her escape is part of his plan. The full Apocalypse explainer covers the ending in detail. (Resident Evil: Apocalypse)

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)#

Directed by Russell Mulcahy. Years later the T-virus has spread across the world and dried it out. The US is a desert. Alice travels alone, hiding from Umbrella, which can track her when she uses her powers. She joins a convoy of survivors led by Claire Redfield, with Carlos and others from Raccoon City. (Resident Evil: Extinction)

Isaacs has spent the years cloning Alice, testing copy after copy in a replica of the Hive and dumping the failures, looking for a cure in her blood. He sends his own zombies after the convoy and is bitten in the attack. Carlos, infected too, sacrifices himself to clear a path into Umbrella's underground base in Nevada. Isaacs doses himself with antivirus and mutates into a Tyrant, and Alice kills him with the help of one of her clones. (Resident Evil: Extinction)

The survivors fly north for Alaska, where they've heard there's a safe haven. Alice stays behind, wakes an army of her clones and contacts Umbrella's board in Tokyo to warn its chairman, Albert Wesker, that she's coming for him. The full Extinction explainer covers the ending in detail. (Resident Evil: Extinction)

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)#

Alice and her clones storm Umbrella's Tokyo headquarters. Wesker escapes, and on his aircraft he injects the real Alice with a serum that takes away her powers before the plane crashes. Months later Alice reaches Alaska and finds the safe haven, Arcadia, is just a field of empty planes, and Claire, with an Umbrella device on her chest; pulling it off leaves her with no memory. (Resident Evil: Afterlife)

The two fly to Los Angeles and land on a prison where survivors are holding out, among them Claire's brother Chris Redfield, locked in a cell. Arcadia, it turns out, is a ship off the coast. They fight their way out through the sewers and get aboard, only to find Arcadia is an Umbrella trap for collecting test subjects. Wesker is on board, fighting the virus inside him, and Alice, Claire and Chris beat him, though he gets away. They free the prisoners, and then an Umbrella fleet arrives, led by Jill Valentine, under mind control. The full Afterlife explainer covers the ending in detail. (Resident Evil: Afterlife)

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)#

Alice wakes as a prisoner in Umbrella's biggest test site, a former Soviet base under the ice off Kamchatka, where Umbrella stages outbreaks in copies of Tokyo, New York, Moscow and suburban Raccoon City, using clones as victims. The Red Queen has come back online and now controls Umbrella, and she wants humanity gone. (Resident Evil: Retribution)

Wesker, now Umbrella's enemy, has sent help. Ada Wong guides Alice through the facility while a team with Leon S. Kennedy and Barry Burton breaks in from outside. Alice picks up Becky, a deaf girl who was the daughter of one of her clones and who now treats Alice as her mother. Barry dies covering their escape. On the ice, Alice tears the device off Jill's chest and frees her. (Resident Evil: Retribution)

The survivors reach Washington, where Wesker has turned the White House into the last human stronghold. He gives Alice her powers back, and the film ends with the defenders looking out at a vast army of monsters closing in. The full Retribution explainer covers the ending in detail. (Resident Evil: Retribution)

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)#

The last stand at the White House failed. Wesker betrayed them, and Alice wakes in the ruins. The Red Queen appears and tells her Umbrella holds an airborne antivirus that can kill every infected thing, hidden in the Hive. Isaacs, very much alive, plans to let the last humans die first. Alice has 48 hours. (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

She learns that the Isaacs she killed in Extinction was a clone. Back in Raccoon City she meets Claire again with a new group of survivors. Inside the Hive, the Red Queen shows them Umbrella's plan: release the virus, wipe out humanity and let the company's elite, frozen in the Hive, inherit the earth. (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

Then comes the big reveal. Isaacs shows Alice an aged woman, Alicia Marcus, Umbrella's co-owner and the daughter of its co-founder James Marcus, and tells Alice she's Alicia's clone. The Red Queen herself was modelled on Alicia as a child. Alicia turns on Wesker, the Red Queen crushes him in a door, and he's left holding the switch for the bombs Alice planted. Isaacs is finally killed by his own clone, Alice reaches the surface and releases the antivirus, and Wesker and the Hive are destroyed. The full Final Chapter explainer covers the ending in detail. (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

How Alice's story connects#

Alice's arc is the thread through all six films, and it's built out of reveals that keep rewriting what came before. In the first film she's a security operative who has lost her memory. Apocalypse makes her Umbrella's experiment, bonded with the T-virus. Extinction shows Umbrella has been cloning her, and ends with her raising a clone army. The Final Chapter finally says she was a clone from the start. (Resident Evil (2002 film); Resident Evil: Apocalypse; Resident Evil: Extinction; Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

Her powers come and go with the plot. The virus makes her superhuman in Apocalypse, Wesker takes it all away in Afterlife, and he gives it back in Retribution. In The Final Chapter the antivirus kills the T-virus inside her too. She survives because it only destroys the virus, not her own cells, and the Red Queen gives her Alicia's childhood memories. The series ends with Alice as a human being with a past of her own, riding off to fight while the cure spreads. (Resident Evil: Afterlife; Resident Evil: Retribution; Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

The villains shift in the same way. The Red Queen is the enemy in the first film, the master of Umbrella in Retribution and Alice's secret helper in The Final Chapter. Isaacs drives the middle films. Wesker starts as a boardroom chairman and becomes the final betrayer. (Resident Evil (2002 film); Resident Evil: Retribution; Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

Some threads just stop. The Final Chapter doesn't bring back Jill, Leon, Ada or Chris after Retribution, and Becky isn't seen again. (Resident Evil: Retribution; Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

How the films differ from the games#

The biggest difference is Alice herself. She's the hero of every film, and the games' characters are supporting cast around her. Claire and Chris, Jill, Leon, Ada and Barry all turn up, but none of them gets anything like the role they have in the games. (Resident Evil: Extinction; Resident Evil: Afterlife; Resident Evil: Retribution)

The scale is different too. In the games Raccoon City is destroyed by a missile in 1998 and the outbreak is contained, and bioterror stays a series of local disasters. The films let the T-virus end civilisation. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil: Extinction)

Umbrella's history is rewritten. In the games, Oswell E. Spencer, James Marcus and Edward Ashford found the company, and Wesker is a S.T.A.R.S. captain working for Umbrella before he turns on it. The films make Marcus and Isaacs the key founders, give Wesker the chairman's seat, and invent the Hive and the Red Queen. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil: The Final Chapter)

Familiar monsters change jobs. The Nemesis, built in the games as Umbrella's hunter for the surviving S.T.A.R.S., is Matt Addison in Apocalypse. Lickers and Tyrants turn up with new origins, and Retribution borrows the giant executioner and mind-control device from Resident Evil 5. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil: Apocalypse; Resident Evil: Retribution)

Where they fit#

Anderson's series is its own continuity and nothing later follows it. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City started over in 2021, and Zach Cregger's Resident Evil came in 2026. Every film and series is listed in every Resident Evil movie in order, and the films that do count for the games are in the CG films guide. (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; Resident Evil (2026 film))