Resident Evil

When the first Resident Evil game was released in the United States in 1996, I don’t imagine anybody thought that it would inspire a still-thriving series of games thirty years later, much less a series of films. The first adaptation, a 2002 movie with the same name, was stylish and fun, but the many sequels ramped up the action and diminished in quality. The new Resident Evil film, directed and co-written by Zach Cregger (Weapons), is a different take on the franchise, and that difference is one of the things that makes it great.

Medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) has just finished his last delivery for the day. He’s supposed to go home and talk to his girlfriend, Michelle (voiced by Sara Paxton), about her pregnancy, a topic he’s not completely enthusiastic about discussing. Seemingly fortuitously he gets a last-minute high-paying delivery assignment to take a mystery package to a hospital in the Colorado mountain town of Raccoon City, and he jumps at the chance. That’s until he hits a woman with his car on the icy highway, and his long nightmarish night begins.

Abrams gives an extremely likeable and sympathetic performance as Bryan, carrying the entire film on his shoulders. He’s skilled at reacting realistically to insane developments, Bryan often being surprised and shrieking in fright in an uncool way that would likely be how most people would respond to these things. Bryan’s constant stream of dialogue, talking to himself in an often-profane way to give himself courage, feels both amusing and understandable. Zach Cherry and (especially) Paul Walter Hauser are both very funny as deluded authority figures our hero encounters upon his journey.

The most brilliant thing Cregger does with this film is its basic concept, which is that it doesn’t follow the plot of the video games, but instead represents the experience of playing them. He vividly recreates the feeling of survival horror, switching from third person- to first-person perspective as needed in a scene. Although the picture is primarily comedic (a la Evil Dead 2), Cregger delivers a few terrific jolting jump scares, one of which is a deliberate nod to perhaps the most famous jump scare in video game history. Hays Holladay and Ryan Holladay’s effective but minimalist score is very reminiscent of The Thing-era John Carpenter’s soundtrack work. 

Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten’s script is a love letter to Resident Evil and other survival horror games, from the settings (tunnels, creepy houses, sewers, labs) to the situations (unbreakable padlocks, constantly running out of ammo, people being remarkably bad shots). The idea of the protagonist being someone who isn’t necessarily a badass hero from the games, but just a regular person who would’ve just been an NPC (non-player character), makes the entire experience more relatable. The Katamari Damacy-inspired body absorbing monster is memorable, as is Bryan’s cry of victory upon defeating a foe – “Video games! Yeah!”

You don’t need to have any knowledge of the games or preexisting films to appreciate Resident Evil – this is just a purely enjoyable movie – but if you do, this picture is even more of a dark delight.