<i>Resident Evil: Extinction</i> devours the competition

SIDEBAR: Of all the different movie monster clichés in the horror film genre, zombies undoubtedly have the best winning percentage. The rotting abominations chalked up another notch in the win column this weekend, as Resident Evil: Extinction feasted upon Good Luck Chuck and The Brave One to top the US weekend box office with a $24 million box office haul, according to Media By Numbers, LLC.

That's the best opening weekend yet for the series, which saw the original Resident Evil take in $18 million and Resident Evil: Apocalypse net $23 million in their US debuts.

Resident Evil: Extinction once again stars Milla Jovovich as Alice, who finds herself hiding out in Nevada with a small group of survivors. Along the way, she'll search for a solution to the zombie infestation threatening mankind and attempt to settle a score with the sinister Umbrella Corporation, which created the zombie plague in the first place.

If Extinction wants to remain on top of the box office heap next weekend, it will need to fend off a diverse group of high- and low-brow new releases that includes Ang Lee's latest, Lust, Caution; The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx; Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited; and The Game Plan, which features Doom star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.