Resident Evil by Zach Cregger is exactly what you want when an exciting new director gets to tackle a huge franchise IP and have creative freedom. Let alone the difficult task of making a video game adaptation. When approaching this, he had to choose the right leading man as well. Austin Abrams was the absolute best choice he could have made when trying to find someone that can balance humor and fear in his actions and push the film along seamlessly. I knew he would be great after seeing him in weapons, but he truly is the heart of this film and the bulk of the screen-time, it is incredible. He is perfectly suited moving this film along just like a video game. Moving from set piece to set, boss fight to boss fight, and even featuring transitions that feel like cut scenes. This is one of the most faithful adaptations of a video game, specifically Resident Evil 2, that I have ever seen. However, in its own way. Brian’s (Austin Abrams) story is like the tape you find in the game as the main character about a character that was there during the outbreak and didn’t survive but left a tape that helps you understand what is happening. It’s a perfect representation of a NPC character running through the hell of Raccoon City.
Zach Cregger knows exactly how to also make an insanely tense and scary moment in the midst of the story he is telling. The POV shots are so scary. Reminds me of the end of HOST with the POV of the phone, but he is obviously doing it as a tribute to the perspective of the games. He does a lot of older the shoulder shots too which is commonly a way people play in the games rather than direct first person POV. The gore is extremely well done and the creativity he uses to create monsters that fit in the Resident Evil Universe is a craft not many could pull off. The dog monster, the infected woman chasing Brian, the connected people monster, the Rat King (insanely gross too what the fuck), and the abomination that comes at the end are a Resident Evil fan’s wet dream.
I was so locked in for the majority of this film. Horror film in a snow setting too was elite. Zach understands sound design extremely well too. Knowing when to be silent and when to crescendo. He also sprinkles plenty of humor in that works. I heard people say some of the humor doesn’t land. I disagree. I think it works very well and Austin pulls it off perfectly. He portrays reactions you’d expect by anyone just dropped into Raccoon City. one other complaint I heard was the Umbrella agents and scientists. Personally I liked the scenes with Paul Walter Hauser. I thought they were hilarious and it felt like they were us watching the events unfold. However, the scientists at the end just were too goofy for me. That is the only complaint I had. This film was near perfect until the end.
The ending didn’t quite land for me. The fate of Brian did work and I love that it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows at the end and that he succumbed to the bite. The doom of what the bite would turn him into and the voicemail blended so well in thinking he would make it out alive and cured but ultimately he became just another part of the outbreak and infected. The scientists though fumbling all over the place and the tone of them scrambling with the cure and acting silly and goofy felt like something straight out of a weird comedy skit on YouTube. Outside that, the film is brilliant. I don’t know if Zach will ever revisit the franchise, I’d like to see what he would do with another Resident Evil story. But him going back to an original film and crushing it like he did with Weapons and Barbarian will be perfectly fine with me as well. 4/5 for me on this one. A film we desperately needed to add to the banger horror catalogue of 2026.
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