The long-awaited Resident Evil movie reboot is out on September 18 and reviews have started pouring in, with most of them praising horror director Zach Cregger’s funny, focused adaptation that they say channels the spirit of the Capcom games without being overly precious about recreating their minutiae on screen. It sounds pretty good, in other words.
I’m not into horror and I mostly admire Resident Evil from a distance, but I’m making an exception to check out what the guy who made Barbarians and Weapons does with one of the most gruesome, silly, and acclaimed franchises in gaming. Fortunately, it sounds like Cregger understood the assignment.
Resident Evil currently sits at a 96 on Rotten Tomatoes, and even if not every critic loved it, almost none of them (so far) thought it was bad. “This is I.P. cinema with vision and verve… This is how movies and video games can merge in a way that makes them stronger for sharing their DNA rather than disfiguring them both,” wrote David Ehrlich for IndieWire. “Resident Evil has a streamlined single-mindedness, and as it barrels through its gamified plot, the tension and entertainment value never flag,” wrote Jesse Hassenger for The Guardian.
The movie is about a medical courier played by Austin Abrams (Euphoria, Wolfs) who stumbles into a zombie outbreak during a delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. It’s presumably a single, unending rollercoaster ride from there. The original cut had so many jokes that Cregger even dropped some of the comedy from the theatrical version after getting feedback from test audiences.
Here’s what the early reviews are saying about the end result:
With a laser focus on putting its hero through the worst night of his life, Resident Evil is a simple and exciting survival horror story that benefits greatly from Zach Cregger’s sensibilities. Austin Abrams is exceedingly charming as the woefully outmatched medical courier Bryan as he’s dragged through a hellish coterie of well-realized mutants and monsters by Cregger, whose good eye for creature effects, mounting dread, and signature humor all leave Resident Evil feeling very well represented. – Tom Jorgensen
It’s when Resident Evil…[heads] into Raccoon City proper as Bryan’s final run of the day takes on world-altering significance, that it threatens to get away from its creator. The momentum hitches and idles, making too much time for extended riffing, unearned emotion, and embodied sub-Cronenbergian themes. The effects—which start off as sinewy, Thing-adjacent organic messes, then morph into unwieldy blobs of pixels—mimic the narrative. Immersive tactile details—like the stark, snow-covered landscape muffling the sound effects of a crashing car or a charging creature—give way to over-designed set pieces. A confident camera that swapped between coy third-person and bodycam-like perspectives loses its clarity in the escalating FX spectacle. Abrams’ magnetism and Cregger’s cynical wit persist, but as the scope grows, they’re left taking up less space. – Jacob Oller
Key to the movie’s success, beyond a clever script and nuanced direction is star Austin Abrams. He isn’t the only actor to appear in this film — other announced cast members include Zach Cherry, Paul Walter Hauser, and Kali Reis of True Detective: Night Country. However, he’s on screen for pretty much every minute, and owns it entirely. Bryan’s far from a perfect guy, making plenty of bad decisions out of frustration or flat-out fear, but right from the beginning he demonstrates a genuine urge to be a good person, keeping us invested in his survival. – Liz Shannon Miller
Weapons had a creepy, evocative aversion to simple metaphorical reads that ultimately increased its effectiveness; the same isn’t quite true here. Resident Evil foregrounds one obvious bit of character change for Bryan, but after doing a great job making us care about him for more than 90 minutes, Cregger seems to abandon him a few steps shy of completing any real journey. Is he awaiting a level up that never arrives? Hard to say. But maybe bringing a video game sensibility to the big screen while keeping any gamer cheesiness on the margins is journey enough. – Jesse Hassenger
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil isn’t just a great video game movie. It’s a great movie. It’s an explosive horror experience which, unlike every other Resident Evil adaptation, captures the strange dichotomy of this popular video game series. It starts out terrifying, gradually becomes ridiculous, and totally gets away with that tonal shift. It may not be a faithful adaptation of a classic Resident Evil storyline but it’s a faithful adaptation of what it feels like to play a classic Resident Evil game. – William Bibbiani
As if creating an invisible mini-map for the audience in real-time, Cregger ensures that we’re always acutely aware of where Bryan is in relation to where he’s going and whatever’s trying to kill him, and that attention to local geography — per the rhythm of the games — allows the movie to derive its scares from the process of getting from one place to another instead of alternating between exploration and combat. Case in point: This movie boasts some of the grossest monsters you’ll ever see on screen, but its hero’s most terrifying nemesis might be the padlocks that block his progress at every gate. The answers to Bryan’s problems are never far out of reach, but solving easy puzzles under pressure is as Resident Evil as it gets. – David Ehrlich
I don’t dislike that Resident Evil is funny, but I also don’t jive with how unserious the whole movie is. The moments of tension are often interrupted with a zinger of some sort that not only takes you out of the moment, but often doesn’t land with the intended impact. It’s a shame, because there are some outstanding setpieces in the first house Bryan encounters, but the closer he gets to his goal, the more absurd and messy things become. Perhaps it’s because Cregger offers zero explanation as to what we are seeing and what is going on, and since these are not supposed to follow the game’s narratives, we should forgo what we know, but in doing so there has to be something to fill the void. Not everything needs to be explained, but things have to make some sense in this world, and nothing seems to. – Matthew Orozco
Just as Raccoon City swallows up Austin Abrams’ unfortunate courier Bryan, the film begins to somewhat lose its footing. Its second act lacks real direction, leaning heavily into horror-comedy — weighted more to the comedy — while getting a little too meta for its own good. Cregger does such a good job of translating the game’s DNA into movie form — from gun upgrades to Bryan’s growing confidence playing out like a literal video game-esque skill tree — that it’s a shame when the film starts spelling out the joke. – Harry Stainer