Review: Resident Evil (2026)

 Resident Evil (2026)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout

Score: 4 out of 5

Making the best adaptation of Resident Evil yet isn't a difficult task, especially nowadays in an era where video game adaptations are taken seriously by filmmakers and studios as more than just pulpy schlock. While I have a soft spot for Paul W. S. Anderson's version with Milla Jovovich, and even the recent Welcome to Raccoon City had its moments, neither of them are particularly great movies, and the sequels to the former eventually devolved into the worst sort of B-grade post-apocalyptic action trash. The animated films that Capcom themselves produced that are canon with the games are mostly just for the fans, and the less said about the 2022 Netflix TV series, the better. So when I heard that Zach Cregger, fresh off of Barbarian and Weapons, had decided to tackle an RE movie, my ears perked up immediately, not only because of his pedigree but also because his ideas for the film, less focused on adapting the games' plot and lore than their atmosphere and survival horror gameplay, sounded like an injection of fresh blood into a franchise whose film adaptations have long struggled -- much like Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which reinvigorated the games themselves by abandoning their growing fixation on action and techno-thriller plots in favor of getting back to the series' roots in nail-biting tension, resource management, and grotesque mutant monsters that had you outmatched.

What Cregger delivered turned out to very much be the RE7 of the films, a back-to-basics reboot that keeps the series' lore in the background in favor of all those things I just mentioned, its protagonist Bryan being somebody who I pegged before the film even came out as the kind of guy who, in one of the games, would be a supporting character whose last words you discover scrawled on a note that you collect somewhere. The film felt like a classic survival horror game not just in its general structure but also in the little things, most notably the fact that Bryan's reactions to everything going on around him feel like those of somebody playing a horror game for the first time not knowing what to do, as if to say "no, this is how you'd actually fare in one of these stories." This wound up being the film's secret weapon, what turned Bryan's journey from tragic to tragicomic. Cregger's background in sketch comedy with the Whitest Kids U'Know is no secret, but while Barbarian and Weapons both had their comedic moments, this was probably the funniest horror movie he's made, one that at times comes close to being an outright horror/comedy even if I wouldn't quite say it crosses that line. Throw on some grisly monster designs, tons of icky body horror, a great lead performance from Austin Abrams, and a nonstop atmosphere of tension that never let up, and Cregger is now three-for-three as a horror filmmaker, with this standing as one of the best video game adaptations of all time and certainly the best RE movie ever made.

Our protagonist Bryan is a medical courier with a pregnant girlfriend who, one night after a delivery, is offered a ton of money to deliver a mysterious package to a hospital in Raccoon City, Colorado. He wants to get home to his girlfriend, but he needs the money more, so he agrees and drives off into the snowy wilderness, the beginning of a twisted comedy of errors as everything that can go wrong for him in one night goes wrong. It turns out that Raccoon City is suffering an outbreak of a mysterious illness that turns people into zombies and monsters, and what's more, the parcel Bryan's carrying is related to it. Beyond the names of Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corporation whose blundering was responsible for the outbreak, as well as the fact that the disease doesn't just zombify people but also turns some of them into mutated monsters (all of which seem to be original designs for the film, even if the influence of the games is visible in some of them), this film is not directly adapting any of the games beyond just a very loose translation of the broad strokes of the second and third ones. Cregger may have made a film at the polar opposite end of the horror spectrum from Anderson's serious, stylish, action-packed take on the material, but one thing they both have in common is that neither is particularly interested in the characters or lore of the games, instead using the basic setup to offer up their own respective ideas on a sci-fi bio-zombie movie.

From there, Cregger served up a story that feels like the platonic ideal of an old-school RE game or survival horror game in general, specifically one from the late '90s or early '00s when RE's influence on the genre ran deepest. Bryan is no action hero, but spends the film panicking, scrounging for weapons and equipment to fend off the monsters assailing him, and flailing about when he has to fight them, as every bullet counts and these beasts are very hard to kill. Often, he escapes the situation by the skin of his teeth, only to find yet more horrors waiting for him around the next corner. In the canon of RE game protagonists, he's less Leon Kennedy or Jill Valentine and more Ethan Winters or Grace Ashcroft. It's an intense experience, and much of it is carried by Austin Abrams in what is, for all intents and purposes, a one-man show for 75% of the movie. He does a hell of a job making Bryan feel like an average Joe who's just found himself caught up in something he's in no way prepared for, reacting to all the mayhem around him with all the F-bombs and gallows humor that most of us would probably indulge in if we wound up in a zombie apocalypse. I saw somebody say that it felt almost like the kind of zombie movie parody that Buster Keaton would've made if he'd lived to see Night of the Living Dead, a very unique take on the archetypal zombie apocalypse protagonist that felt brimming with personality. There's not a whole lot of character to Bryan in the script, but Abrams takes what's there, particularly his love of his girlfriend and his worries about becoming a father, and makes the most of it, crafting a tragic yet funny character who knows full well what a world of shit he's gotten himself sucked into.

As for that world of shit, Cregger felt heavily influenced by some of the game series' deep cuts, especially some of its wilder plagues and mutagens that don't just turn people into zombies but cause some of them to mutate into bewildering monsters. Alongside the typical undead hordes, we also get tentacles out the wazoo, monsters made of multiple zombies fused together into nightmarish, multi-limbed flesh beasts, a zombie that can vomit acid, a horde of zombie rats that's hollowed a man out from the inside, an infected and scared young girl who's slowly mutating into a monster, and plenty more that I'm probably forgetting (or don't want to spoil). This is an old-school gamer's idea of a zombie apocalypse, one where the developers came up with all manner of unique creatures to shake up the gameplay and provide you with unique challenges beyond just having you shoot the same shamblers over and over again, and Cregger makes it feel truly unlike your typical zombie film, with Raccoon City coming across as not only overrun by zombies but turning into something downright alien and hostile to life. In a way, the semi-comedic tone of the film actually does a lot of the lifting in selling this environment, the jokes and the monsters coming together to make it feel like Bryan's wandered into a world where reality's gone out to lunch and he's reacting as a normal person logically should to what he's seeing. The climax was where this tone reached its apex, feeling almost like a black comedy sketch about everything that can go wrong in a zombie movie happening all at once, and while the dark note this film went out on seemed to be, from my observation, one of its more contentious moments among fans and critics, I personally loved it and felt that it was the perfect way to wrap up a story like this.

The Bottom Line

This film may not borrow much from the canon of the games beyond the basic ideas, but make no mistake, this is not "Resident Evil in name only." It's a thrilling, intense, and darkly comedic film that's filled to bursting with grotesque sights and scenes, all of it anchored by a star-making performance from Austin Abrams. Zach Cregger took a big swing with his ideas for this film, and while he didn't quite hit it out of the park, he definitely scored.