The film focuses on Alice (Milla Jovovich) captured by the Umbrella Corporation, forcing her to make her escape from an underwater facility in the Extreme North, used for testing the T-virus.

Fighting her way against zombies, she enters a control room filled with dead Umbrella employees and encounters Ada Wong, one of Albert Wesker's top agents.

The underwater facility, formerly a Soviet naval outpost in Kamchatka, Russia, was designed by Umbrella for manufacturing clones and creating simulated outbreaks to show the effect of the T-virus.

Ada and Alice aim to rendezvous with a rescue crew organized by Wesker, which includes Leon S. Kennedy, Barry Burton, and Luther West.

They also find Jill and the clones of Alice's deceased allies: James "One" Shade, Rain Ocampo, and Carlos Oliveira, who are sent to capture them.

Alice, Jill, and the remaining survivors travel to Wesker's headquarters, a heavily fortified White House, staffed by the remainders of the U.S. military.

Las Plagas plays a part in the film and allows the undead to "run around, ride motorbikes, and shoot machine guns.

But we felt the area that hadn't been mined by western cinema much was that whole kind of high impact Thai style of fighting.

We tried to bring that into the movie, which is also good for 3D because obviously 3D makes it harder to sell those kind of fake phony punches because you see the distance between the fist and the face.

"[10] Returning from the previous film are: Milla Jovovich as Alice, Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine) and Boris Kodjoe (Luther West).

[16] The characters Ada Wong (played by Li Bingbing), Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb)[17] and Barry Burton (Kevin Durand) appear in the film.

[22] The Red Epic camera system was used, which producer Jeremy Bolt said is 50% smaller than the Sony F35 that was used for Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Emergency workers had a difficult time determining which injuries were real, since the people were dressed in zombie costumes with fake blood.

Anderson explained that the score for the film is a progression of Afterlife's, stating that he "wants to kind of mesh their more electronic stuff with an orchestra this time.

[27] Singer Mika Nakashima sings the theme song for the Japanese version of the film, "Ashita Sekai ga Owarunara.

"[28] The first teaser trailer of the film was attached to Underworld: Awakening, an installment from Resident Evil's rival film series, and released in January 2012, featuring product placement promoting Sony products such as the Xperia phone, the PlayStation Vita and the Tablet S, underscored by narration from Patrick Stewart, before transitioning into a post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C., with Alice standing on the roof of the White House,[29][30] in similar fashion to the promotion for previous installments, Apocalypse and Extinction.

A viral website, UmbrellaCorporation.net, supposedly informed about Umbrella, reported that it was on a recruitment tour all over the world searching for "great minds to help them advance".

At the same time, an actual mobile tour for the film was launched, travelling to Cancún, Barcelona, Poznań, Warsaw and Rome.

A second trailer premiered online on June 14, following a live Q&A with Milla Jovovich in New York City and was attached to prints of That's My Boy.

[31] Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Oded Fehr, Boris Kodjoe, Mika Nakashima and Paul W. S. Anderson appeared at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, July 13.

[32] On August 10, 2012, a group of 27 people dressed as zombies "invaded" the Shibuya shopping district and handed out leaflets to promote the film.

Li Bingbing did not appear at the premiere, raising speculation from reporters that her absence was a demonstration against the escalating dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Resident Evil: Retribution offers everything one might reasonably expect from the fifth installment in a heavily action-dependent franchise – which means very little beyond stylishly hollow CGI-enhanced set pieces.

[47] Jim Vejvoda at IGN gave the film a six out of ten, saying: "Even with all of its dopey dialogue, wooden characters and 'been there, done that' elements, Resident Evil: Retribution is pretty amazing as far as entries in this series go.

It certainly feels more like a video game and has a bit more emotion to it than some of the past Resident Evil sequels, but if you don't like this series then there's not much here to make you suddenly warm up to it.

Anderson's overseeing of the Resident Evil zombie franchise has proven to be both lunatically haphazard and dementedly enthusiastic.

In an interview with film critic Willow Maclay, Scout Tafoya at RogerEbert.com said "Retribution posits a sort of femininity simulator as the kind of test of the body's fitness for the wider world, which to me is one of the most fascinating things I've seen in a big action movie", while Maclay makes a comparison to Mamoru Oshii's anime movie Angel's Egg "as a film about a life giving creature who is drawn in these hollow worlds she traverses", adding: I've always considered Alice to have a similar projection of ideas in her character, and the motherhood angle in Retribution ties all of that together.

[50] When Retribution outgrossed Afterlife Sony distribution's head, Rory Bruer, confirmed that there would be a sixth film.

[55] In an interview with Forbes, producer Samuel Hadida stated that a sixth and seventh installment were planned and a reboot of the series was possible.

Joining the cast were Ruby Rose as Abigail, Eoin Macken as Doc, William Levy as Christian, Fraser James as Michael and Rola as Cobalt.