Resident Evil delivers the scares, but is empty and lacks heart

BY TYLER HENSON

Resident Evil (95mins)

Zack Cregger, writer/director of last year’s Weapons (2025), is back already with a feature film reboot of the popular Resident Evil video game franchise, and it looks like he has another hit on his hands. The reception has been ecstatic and the film is taking a sizable bite out of the box office. There’s no denying it’s a scary good time at the movies, although this reviewer didn’t find it to be a film of much substance.

Austin Abrams leads what is effectively a one-man show as Bryan, a medical courier who gets a last minute assignment delivering a mysterious and important package to Raccoon City Hospital. His route takes him through snowbound backwoods, where he struggles to maintain a phone signal and provide a proper response to his girlfriend’s pregnancy. Next thing he knows, a strange looking woman steps out of the woods right in front of his car. But a possible hit-and-run accident will be the least of his worries tonight.

Anyone familiar with the Resident Evil games will know where this plot is developing. We’ll avoid major spoiler territory. Suffice to say, Bryan will eventually figure out that a dangerous virus has escaped a lab and is turning the population into ravenous zombies. Working with a clear knowledge of the pre-existing world of the games, Cregger smartly keeps esoteric details to the background. The entire film is about Bryan’s ground-level experience. He learns what’s happening in real time, and none of the deeper lore gets in the way. Viewers who haven’t played the games don’t have to worry about becoming lost.

This is now the third time Resident Evil has been adapted to the screen. The first film, starring Milla Jovovich and released in 2002, spawned a six film franchise that was inane and incomprehensible. The 2021 reboot, Welcome to Raccoon City, had a promising start but fell apart near the halfway point. Cregger’s version is by far the best. He’s approached the material with a savvy understanding of gaming and horror moviemaking.

The film is structured not unlike a video game. Bryan’s mission is simple; deliver the package, find sanctuary at the hospital. He collects weapons and equipment along the way. His encounters with the zombies grow steadily more dangerous and challenging. Obstacles frequently bar his progress, requiring detours. One source of humor is Bryan’s difficulty in dealing with stubborn padlocks, which seem to pop up on gates around every corner. We’re essentially watching a filmed version of a multi-level game.

Cregger balances out that design with well-paced, cinematic, and highly effective horror sequences. The zombies chasing Bryan are not the standard shuffling corpses, or even the rabid hordes of more recent films like World War Z (2013). These are unpredictably mutating creatures, always springing another nasty surprise on Bryan in every scene. Cregger uses the expected horror movie tools – indicating an upcoming scare and then drawing out the buildup – but his innovation is to make the payoff a major reveal. We learn something new almost every time a zombie attacks. This lends more excitement and anticipation to each scare.

Abrams does a solid job carrying the film. Bryan is inept and immature, yet Abrams makes him sympathetic through his everyman quality and assured comic timing. The first time Bryan is chased by a zombie, he leads it in a frantic merry-go-round around a car as he fumbles for the safety catch on a pistol. Like a Twitch streamer, he keeps up a constant banter with himself, commenting, complaining, and swearing at every problem facing him, big or small. It’s lacking subtlety, but it does add to the entertainment.

The only thing the movie could have used was a touch more sincerity. Cregger proves without a shadow of a doubt that he understands how to make horror with a comic sensibility. He can deliver gross-out gore and self aware gags galore. He’s made an enjoyable exercise in genre. He just hasn’t given it a true emotional core. The human touches, like Bryan’s phone conversations with his pregnant girlfriend, never feel like anything other than screenplay devices, a way to insert one or two requisite beats of drama. It might have benefited Abrams’ performance if he could have taken an occasional break from being funny and frightened to add a little dimension to Bryan as a character.

As the movie reached its closing scenes, the story’s hollowness became more apparent. This reviewer walked out feeling slightly cheated by the ending, which had the sour aftertaste of a cynical joke. It’s a grievance, but not serious enough to discourage people from seeing the film. For the majority of his short runtime, Cregger sustains enough immediacy that most of his problems are covered by momentum and showmanship. Shallowness on its own isn’t necessarily fatal, only shallowness and boredom.

And anyway, Resident Evil is not on a mission of depth and drama. This is a movie about scares, laughs, and delivering a fun night out at the movies. On that front, it is a success. Cregger knows his audience, and he knows how to give them what they want. Coming after Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parson’s Backrooms, this is the latest evidence that 2026 will be remembered as a banner year in horror.

Now playing at Contra Costa Cinema. You can visit https://contracostacinema.com for showtimes.