Resident Evil Review: Zach Cregger Crafts an Ideal Tribute to an Iconic Series

Resident Evil, as a game series, has always borrowed heavily from cinema, whether it be the fixed angles and Kiyoshi Kurosawa inspirations of the first title to the Texas Chainsaw riffs in the 7th. It’s less about the zombies, more the feeling of powerlessness and weird puzzles. Zach Cregger understands this on a deep level. His follow-up to Weapons may not be a pitch-perfect adaptation of the long-running lore, but it perfectly captures the spirit of Resident Evil as a whole, not to mention what it’s like to play it. The perfect title might actually have been Biohazard. 

Austin Abrams plays the classic survival-horror protagonist, which is to say: a person thrown into a situation with impossible odds, dwindling resources, and unimaginable horrors that test even hardened cops and soldiers. Bryan, a medical courier, is introduced in a long take amidst an argument on the phone with his girlfriend and blanching at a grizzly wound in the hospital. Like all gig workers, he’s hurried and ignored, ready to go home when presented with a job that’ll pay him double simply for taking a green case to Raccoon City. Who cares if his car has chains?

Of course it goes wrong, but the greatest pleasure is how Cregger toys with audience expectations. He keeps cutting back from Bryan on the phone to the road ahead, drawing out the inevitable car crash until it happens with the victim in shallow focus. Barbarian and Weapons‘ sense of humor retains throughout, Abrams once again making a great fit at both tossing off one-liners and being terrified. The RE protagonist he resembles the most—in tone and action, if not looks—is Ethan Winters, the lead of 7: Biohazard and 8: Village, a man who is just searching for his wife, has never used a gun before, and simply cannot believe any of this is happening. (When going under yet another tunnel, he says incredulously, “Who builds this shit?”) One of Resident Evil’s best running gags is Bryan’s incompetence with firearms, but it also functions as a means of building tension. You’re always aware of how little ammo he has, and his frequent fumbles with reloading never get old. First and foremost, Resident Evil is a well-oiled scare machine from a director who already demonstrated proficiency with making the audience jump and laugh. This time he manages to get them doing both at once, and one doesn’t always know where they’ll end up.

It helps that the monsters are inventively disgusting. Some may quibble with the fact that they’re not “traditional” zombies, to which I say: Resident Evil has always ended with some massively corrupted abomination against God and Science, not to mention changing what exactly the zombies are approximately every third entry. Rest assured that, despite them being relatively “new,” the multi-limbed crawler, claws, and tentacles are very faithful. You can just tell when some new bullshit is going to come around, and there’s a sick delight in seeing what Cregger and Weta will devise next. There’s also a guy that vomits acid, and I have certainly dealt with that at least once or twice. 

More than anything, though, Resident Evil may be the first video game adaptation that actually translates some of the more mechanical concepts to cinematic language. It’s not just the couple of times where the camera shows a down-barrel first-person view, but in the composition of a sole light shining on a distant farmhouse in a dark, secluded area, or having to open a ton of drawers hoping to find ammo. Do I even get to the very specific keys needed to open the numerous locks (that one has a great payoff)? Perhaps the best scene comes in an abandoned traffic tunnel where an RV blocks the only way out. The camera’s view inside is limited to just what Bryan sees, and we hear the bump from the back exit. You know you have to go there to continue, but you don’t want to—that’s where the scary thing is. How it eventually resolves subverts how one expects it’ll go while still giving exactly what’s anticipated once your guard is down. In that sense, Resident Evil is the perfect game adaptation, even without the callbacks like a typewriter or first-aid spray.

Admittedly, there isn’t much substance when compared to Cregger’s previous works, but that hardly seems to matter much in the long run. Bryan’s predicament is so inherently sympathetic—his running monologue is also mostly endearing—that a last-ditch attempt at greater pathos feels unnecessary. The supporting cast (including Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry) make the most of their parts despite relatively thin screentime, and by nature are not so developed as the person with whom we’ve spent an hour-plus. No Aunt Gladys will be breaking out here. In every other respect, Resident Evil is the ideal tribute to 30 years of the series, making one feel they’re playing along with the character. On top of that, it’s just a damned good thrill ride that stands alone. Would that all video game adaptations were like it.

Resident Evil opens on Friday, September 18.