By Dolores Quintana

Resident Evil is one of the most popular and long-running video game franchises in the world, created in 1996 by the Japanese company Capcom. The video game franchise has also been the source of a live-action film franchise that had six entries and two reboots.

Get tickets here. Showtimes, especially in IMAX, are selling quickly. I highly recommend this film, as I did Onslaught a couple of weeks ago. We’re having a great action horror late summer.

The second reboot was released on September 18. It was directed and co-written by the acclaimed horror film director Zach Cregger, who directed Barbarian and 2025’s Weapons, which was not only lauded by film critics, but was one of the year’s biggest hits. Amy Madigan won an Academy Award for her performance as the villainous yet pitiable Aunt Gladys in Weapons. Cregger has been on a roll, and Resident Evil is something for audiences to get really excited about.

This is the first time that Cregger has directed a film that is adapted from another work, and he co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum). Cregger has gone on the record as being a gamer and a fan of Resident Evil who enjoys playing the survival horror games. It becomes clear very quickly that Cregger knows and loves the games. He’s not making a video game movie because video game movies are bankable; he’s making it because it’s the movie he would want to see.

Austin Abrams as Bryan, covered in blood, in Resident Evil. Photo Credit: Sony Pictures.

In Resident Evil, Cregger has jettisoned the glossy action and gore of the Paul W.S. Anderson series and gone with an original story and characters, centering on a medical courier who can’t catch a break. One of the cast members from Weapons, Austin Abrams, who played Justin, the hapless drug addict, is back at the center of the film. Other cast members include Zach Cherry

Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser.

The hallmarks of previous adaptations have been the stylized violence, with slow-motion kicks in the air, and the perfectly attired and coiffed Milla Jovovich. No one knows where she gets those outfits and lip gloss during the zombie apocalypse. Abrams’ Bryan is in checkered shirts and other layered winter clothing because the setting of the film starts on a cold winter’s night, when Bryan is given an assignment that would net him double pay, but would take him to Raccoon City, Colorado. If you aren’t familiar with the games, Raccoon City is ground zero for the Umbrella Corporation’s bioweapons going monstrously out of control.

Cregger is really starting from ground zero and, in a bold stroke, has made the series his. By giving the audience a relatable and ordinary character, he has given us someone that we feel an instant empathy for. He’s not some S.T.A.R.S. elite task force member; he’s a gamer who has to figure out how to shoot a weapon and does so by trial and error. Lots of errors. Bryan is basically a good dude who is just trying to survive doing a menial job, and his talent is that he will find a way no matter what. It is something that people who work low-paying jobs figure out pretty quickly; he knows how to improvise no matter what horrible situation he gets into.

Abrams is perfect for the role. He is what they used to call a “cutie patootie” with a million-watt smile, when he is not screaming and cursing at each new level of T-Virus zombie and mutated human hybrid hell that spills out in front of him, sometimes literally. You see the look of exasperation or desperation on his highly expressive face and in his eyes. There’s a still that is used for one of the promotional posters where he has a shell-shocked look of terror, in a rare moment of calm, but after a certain point, Bryan and the audience aren’t given much room to catch their breath.

Andrea Miltner, Austin Abrams, and Johnno Wilson in Resident Evil. Photo Credit: Sony Pictures.

The movie moves quickly once the setup is established, and Bryan sprints from one horrible situation to another. It’s breathtaking filmmaking, first in an eerie, snowbound road, and then into an urban landscape blighted by roaming terrors. The story has a very ironic sense of humor and turns your cinematic expectations inward on themselves. This is the work of a writer and director who not only understands the horror genre, but the video games too.

While Bryan seems merely to be surviving on beginner’s luck, it becomes clear that he is using his video game experience to his advantage, and there is a running joke throughout the film that pokes fun at the seemingly indestructible characters of the other film series/games. Bryan counts his bullets, so there is no “infinite ammo” or “magical reloads” when the gun is out; Bryan is S.O.L.

The movie is kind of like gameplay itself, as in scenes, particularly the “It’s raining zombies” sequence, where Bryan pauses before making the decision to run. The pause is the moment when the game would be giving you choices before you have to advance into a new scene.

The cinematography by Dariusz Wolski is gorgeous. From the frosty white hellscape of the scenes in the country to the yellow-tinged nightmare of the Raccoon City scenes, which fold in and out of each, the camera movement mirrors whatever Abrams’ Bryan is looking at. Filmed for IMAX, it still has an intimate feel where you, as Bryan, peep into the abyss.

Austin Abrams as Bryan holding zombies off in Resident Evil. Photo Credit: Sony Pictures.

Cregger is also working with a nascent horror film subgenre with Resident Evil. It’s the unprepared/unwilling dad theme that has been used before in Train to Busan and Exit 8. Having children is a frightening prospect, and in the film, Bryan is literally confronted by his own fears.

One of Cregger’s greatest talents is his ability to give his characters depth without using tedious tricks like long expositional speeches or backstories with flashbacks; he shows who they are rather than trying to lecture the audience about who the characters are. He trusts his actors to be able to bring inner life to the roles they are playing, and it pays off; because he casts and directs them so well, it works.

Resident Evil is an intelligent, hilarious, nerve-racking, and emotionally compelling action horror film that doesn’t rely on sickening violence for its scares. Sometimes it shows you the aftereffects of violence, which leaves your mind free to imagine horrible things. On my scream count: Resident Evil gets four screams. The scares come because you care about Austin Abrams’ Bryan, and the film delivers an emotional gut punch more than once.

This is the Resident Evil that fans of the game franchise actually deserve, even though some of the more vocal gamer critics of the film don’t get it yet. It stands head and shoulders above all other Resident Evil movies. Cregger did it. He made the best Resident Evil movie.

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