Rating 8/10
Resident Evil has been around since 1996, so this may be hard to believe, but I know hardly anything about the franchise. I haven’t played the video games nor seen the seven previous live-action movies. Luckily, it didn’t matter. I understood everything in this latest reboot and never felt lost. After Barbarian and Weapons, two movies I loved, director Zach Cregger proves once again that he’s the real deal. He knows how to take a simple story and maximize it for shocks. And laughs. This is a surprisingly funny movie.
Austin Abrams stars as Bryan, a medical courier tasked with delivering a mysterious package to Raccoon General Hospital. While driving through a snowstorm, he accidentally hits a woman (Andrea Miltner) standing in the middle of a remote road. A local sheriff (Johnno Wilson) stops to help and offers to escort Bryan and the injured woman to Raccoon City, but before long their trip takes a horrifying turn. Bryan soon discovers that people are being transformed into abnormal creatures, and his routine delivery becomes a desperate trek through nightmarish territory.
Abrams is the perfect everyman for this insanity. He can barely shoot a gun to save his life, seems perpetually exasperated by every new problem placed in front of him, and yet somehow manages to stay one step ahead of a virus affecting the landscape. In fact, his lack of combat skills makes him even easier to root for. With few other human characters to share the load, he carries the film and is more than up to the task.
I also loved the movie’s brevity. At about 90 minutes, Resident Evil is a brisk thrill ride. Once it gets moving, it never stops. Bryan starts with a handgun and graduates to more powerful weapons. Even as a newcomer, I could sense the video-game structure: survive one environment, move on to the next level, encounter the latest threat, repeat.
At times, his journey into ever-increasing absurdity reminded me of Griffin Dunne in After Hours: an ordinary guy trapped in a long night that becomes more surreal and dangerous with every fresh destination. Except here, the eccentric New Yorkers have been replaced by grotesque biological horrors.
Cregger’s visual imagination is one of the movie’s greatest strengths. The creature designs are fantastic, and I don’t want to say much more. Part of the fun is watching how the terror evolves into something more outrageous. Some of this stuff has to be seen to be believed. There are shades of Cronenberg body horror. The Brood came to mind. However, Cregger’s outlook is decidedly funnier and, at times, outright bonkers without sacrificing an ounce of the ominous mood. The snowbound nighttime setting is also a major asset, with headlights, darkness, and isolated locations giving each stop on Bryan’s adventure an eerie feel before we even know what’s waiting for him.
And it is indeed frightening. There are several well-timed jump scares, including one that got me so badly I was literally jolted out of my seat. I actually slammed my leg into the little swing-out tray table attached to my recliner. That may be the first time a movie has physically injured me.
The ending is admittedly a bleak cop-out. I wanted a more satisfying resolution, but that disappointment couldn’t undo the fun of getting there. Cregger made me laugh and made me care whether Bryan survived. I can’t defend the abrupt ending, but I can certainly vouch for the scares.
09-17-26