It's taken six attempts, one reboot and one doomed Netflix show... But now, after 24 years, we have a good Resident Evil film.
Being a video game fan is a tough gig when it comes to film adaptations. Unless you count recent TV series like The Last Of Us and Fallout, console-to-screen transformations have historically resulted in cinematic poison.
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One video game franchise which has had a particularly rough time of it is Capcom's Resident Evil, which has been cursed with six live-action films, one dire 2021 reboot, and a failed Netflix series which was promptly cancelled because an actual viral infection would've been preferable to a second season.
When the news dropped that horror's indie darling Zach Cregger was helming a brand-new reboot of the maligned IP, there was every reason to be skeptical or depressed. Or both. After two critically acclaimed films (Barbarian and the Oscar-winning Weapons), it seemed like Cregger was cashing in already and happy to take some Playstation / Sony bucks in exchange for silencing his original voice.
We should have kept the faith, as it turns out the director knew what he was doing. It's taken 24 years, but thanks to Cregger, Resident Evil fans finally have an adaptation they can be proud to champion.
The 2026 premise discards the high-concept lore and events of the games, lets go of Milla Jovovich’s Alice, and takes things back to basics. We meet Bryan (Austin Abrams), a hapless medical courier who’s about to head home to his girlfriend, who has just informed him she's pregnant. Instead of clocking out, he accepts a double-pay gig that involves him transporting a high-priority package to Raccoon City General Hospital.
He believes he's dropping off a vital organ. It's not.
On the road, he hits a woman with his vehicle, who is alive but seems to be in shock. She's not.
Thus begins the longest night of Bryan's life, during which he'll battle a lack of phone service, struggle with guns he doesn't know how to reload, and contend with A LOT of pesky padlocks.
Oh yeah, and there's a virus that rewrites DNA, strips the infected of their humanity, and transforms them into flesh-craving zombies, cartwheeling multi-limbed monstrosities, tentacled mutants and kamikaze fleshbags. Those will all be a hindrance too.
Cregger gets so much right here, to the extent it's borderline heroic considering previous adaptations. He perfectly doses the gore, the nail-biting dread, some well-timed (and never gratuitous) jump scares, and adds a surprising amount of humour. This comedic element proves to be crucial, as Cregger and his co-writer Shay Hatten understood the merit of injecting some relatability into a mix which includes Brian Yuzna-levels of body horror and creatures which look like they've escaped from John Carpenter's The Thing.
This is made possible in large part thanks to Austin Abrams, who played the homeless drug addict in Weapons. His character is a squealing and bumbling everyman who possesses none of the heroic, action-savvy qualities you'd expect from a leading man. He's just an average guy on an A-to-B mission, trying to survive whatever is trying to kill him. Abrams understood the assignment and absolutely nails it.
The first half of Resident Evil is undeniably its strongest, as once Bryan runs into an Umbrella Corporation scientist and a security agent (Paul Walter Hauser and Kali Reis), the white-knuckle ride gradually starts to become a bit more repetitive. It's during this second half that you're reminded you're in a Resident Evil adaptation; the unavoidable inclusion of the nefarious biotech company and a few POV shots to keep gamers happy feel slightly jarring within the everyman fight for survival. It's never not deliriously entertaining though, all the way until an afterthought ending which does let the film down. Not in how bluntly and almost hilariously abrupt it is; that part feels in keeping with the film's increasingly loopy tone. It's the way it undercuts Brian's character arc and reduces it to a Society-shaped punchline which ends things on a bit of a bum note.
Still, for a large part of Resident Evil ’s runtime, Cregger pulls off not only the best Resident Evil film but the first great movie game adaptation. Granted, both very low bars to clear, but plaudits nonetheless go to a smartly handled reboot. Goes to show that when you hire the right talent behind and in front of the camera, even a doomed IP can be revived.
Resident Evil is out in cinemas now.
