Resident Evil Review: Zach Cregger's Game Adaptation Is A Lean, Mean Gross-Out Machine
by Chris Evangelista · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Zach Cregger performs a hat trick with "Resident Evil," a consistently funny, frequently scary, unapologetically gross film that feels like running through the best carnival haunted house you've ever been to. After the one-two punch of "Barbarian" and "Weapons," Cregger has waded into IP waters here, but he's not interested in adapting any of the many "Resident Evil" games, nor does he care to recreate anything from the previous "Resident Evil" movies (when I interviewed Cregger during the release of "Weapons," he told me he had never actually seen any of the other "Resident Evil" movies).
Instead, Cregger is grafting his own original story into the "Resident Evil" world, and while I imagine that could annoy some folks who just want their video game movies to jingle keys in front of their faces and show them stuff they recognize, others will have no trouble going along with the monster-fest unfolding here.
Clocking in at a shockingly brisk 90 minutes, Cregger's "Resident Evil" is the type of video game movie that feels like playing a video game. Such an approach could've backfired badly, but the filmmaker manages to make it cinematic while invoking the atmosphere of following a video game protagonist completing a series of increasingly dangerous (and often frustrating) tasks while trying to reach an endpoint.
Austin Abrams makes a great inept hero
Austin Abrams, who appeared in Cregger's "Weapons," is Bryan, a medical courier about to have one bad night. Abrams is the lynchpin holding everything together here, as he's on camera for virtually every scene of the film. Indeed, while he bumps into other people here and there, this is essentially a one-man show, with Bryan as our guide through the film's blood-soaked events, and Abrams is laugh-out-loud funny playing the character as one of the most inept horror movie heroes of all time.
Rather than be instantly adept at everything he does, Bryan is almost always out of his element. When he picks up a gun, he doesn't really know how to use it. When he tries to ram a locked gate with a truck, it doesn't go well. And there's a great running gag where he keeps trying to shoot open padlocks only to find that's not as easy as it is in movies (and video games).
Bryan's latest task has him on a late night run to deliver a mysterious package to Raccoon City, which means he has to drive his ill-equipped car up a snowy mountain. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski captures this snowbound trek in gorgeous colors, with the lights from Bryan's car contrasting the stark whiteness of all that damn snow. Wolski deserves extra points for finding ways to make the film, which is set entirely at night, easy to read — so many modern DOPs have lost the ability to create clear images set during the darkness of night, but every frame of "Resident Evil" pops.
Resident Evil is filled with delightfully gross slimy mutant monsters
Something goes wrong almost immediately, and Bryan finds himself on foot moving from one location to the next — a farmhouse, a tunnel choked with abandoned cars, a sewer, a city street, and so on. It has the overall feeling of a video game player moving from one level to the next, and Cregger embraces this with visual tricks that recall the feel of a game, like POV shots mixed with the camera trailing just behind Bryan.
Everywhere Bryan goes, he encounters scary, slimy mutant monsters ready to tear him apart. Something has gone terribly wrong in Raccoon City, unleashing a viral outbreak that turns humans into unspeakable creatures that feel like a cross between H.P. Lovecraft's worst nightmares and Rob Bottin's iconic creatures from John Carpenter's "The Thing." Many of these monsters appear to be done practically by slathering actors and puppets in a plethora of goop and goo, which is an added bonus.
Resident Evil's script is a little too thin for its own good
Cregger, who co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten, makes "Resident Evil" as lean as possible — there's no fat on this thing as Bryan sprints from one blood-drenched location to the next. This makes the film breathless fun, but if you stop to think about everything for more than a minute, some of the charm begins to fade.
After "Barbarian" and "Weapons," I know Cregger can make movies that are, well, smarter than this. Once you look beyond all the slime you start to realize there's just not a whole lot to "Resident Evil." There's an undercooked storyline about Bryan learning his off-screen girlfriend is pregnant and grappling with whether or not he even wants to be a father, but "Resident Evil" fails to explore this very much.
There are even a few moments, like when Bryan has to navigate through a gruesome hospital maternity ward, or when he comes face-to-face with an infected child, where it seems like the film is going to tie Bryan's fatherhood fears more firmly to the narrative ... only to rush forward to the next gory set piece. None of this ends up being detrimental to the film as a whole, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice it. The film's final act also feels underdone, as if everyone ran out of ideas and decided to wrap things up quickly.
Resident Evil is so fun and gruesome that it's hard not to enjoy the ride
And yet ... "Resident Evil" is so breezy, so swift, and oh so gruesome that it's kind of hard not to throw up your hands and go along with the ride. I got a particular kick out of the way Bryan grumbles and mumbles and curses to himself as he tries to perform one annoying task after another (I myself do this all the time, so I can relate), and some of the creature designs are so delightfully twisted and strange — all writhing limbs and tumbling torsos — that I grinned with sick glee.
Cregger has proven he's capable of better movies than this, but "Resident Evil" is probably his most entertaining movie so far, and that might just be enough in the end. It's hard not to have fun with a movie filled to the brim with exploding heads, mutant babies, and monsters that puke acid. Hey, Halloween is right around the corner, folks. Here's your perfect spooky season treat.
/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10
"Resident Evil" opens in theaters on September 18, 2026.