by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, Johnno Wilson
Intro:
… a slick, lean, fat free horror experience brimming with atmosphere and well-crafted tension.
Before Resident Evil (2026) there were seven other attempts to bring Capcom’s popular video game series to the big screen. Despite the late, great George Romero almost taking the reins in the late ‘90s (oh, can you imagine how glorious that would have been?), it was Paul WS Anderson who ushered in the first crack in 2002 with Resident Evil, which led to five sequels of varying quality culminating in 2016’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. The films, by the end, had become incoherent nonsense, even by video game adaptation standards. So, a reboot was ordered, 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a film almost as clunky and unappealing as its title. The franchise languished then until the present day, when it was announced that uber talented director Zach Cregger – of Barbarian and Weapons fame – was throwing his hat in the ring for an original, standalone story set in the Resident Evil universe. For a lot of horror fans, this was a bittersweet announcement. Sure, Cregger is one of the most exciting genre voices in yonks, but taking his fresh vibe and stapling it to an existing IP felt like a sure way to dilute what makes his films so good. Now that Resident Evil is here, however, we’re happy to report that the film is a hoot, with a few small caveats.
Resident Evil is the story of mild-mannered, affable medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams), who on a dark and snowy night, takes a last minute delivery to Racoon City, a long and dangerous drive in perilous weather conditions. Sure enough, Bryan comes a cropper, hitting a strange woman who lurches into the road. But boy, there sure seems to be something wrong with the lady beyond the vehicular damage, and what big teeth she has… From there, Bryan finds himself in a desperate race against time, through horrific circumstances, to get his delivery to its intended destination before it’s too late.
At its core, Resident Evil is a chase movie. In fact, it feels like the movie Hope wanted to be: basically, a string of gorgeously-realised set pieces with ever increasing stakes and lunacy. At a slender 95-minutes, Cregger keeps the pace fast and tense, with a couple of genuinely creepy moments and a jump scare that may have caused your horror veteran scribe to hoot out a surprised (but manly) yorp. Austin Abrams is an agreeable everyman, absolutely out of his element, and you find yourself rooting for him even when he so frequently screws up.
While the film plays fast and loose with the lore of the video games, it manages to nail that shivery, apprehensive, exquisite bone-deep tension that makes playing those titles so much damn fun. Ironically, just like the games, it gets a little too big and silly in the third act, undoing some of the more subtle moments of mood building. There’s also questionable CGI here and there, but sadly that feels like business as usual these days.
Resident Evil is a slick, lean, fat free horror experience brimming with atmosphere and well-crafted tension. It’s not as creative as Cregger’s previous films, but manages to be the best Resident Evil flick to date by a huge margin, combining fear, gore, thrills and jaw-dropping mayhem. It’s not a long time but it is a good time and may just be the antidote to the growing infection of overlong, soulless studio slop.
