Resident Evil Review: Zach Cregger’s Best Movie Yet
There have been plenty of adaptations of Capcom’s famous video game series to the big screen over the years, but the new Resident Evil takes a surprisingly simple approach. Rather than attempting to cram fan-favorite characters, sprawling mythology, and years of video game lore into one movie, director Zach Cregger strips the story down to its most basic premise: one person, one destination, and a city overrun by zombies. The result is a surprisingly effective horror thriller that understands that sometimes the simplest idea can be the most terrifying.
Austin Abrams stars as Bryan, a medical courier tasked with delivering an important package to Raccoon City General Hospital. Unfortunately for him, getting from Point A to Point B becomes significantly more complicated when a zombie outbreak begins spreading. Suddenly, what should have been a routine delivery becomes a fight for survival, and Bryan has to navigate a nightmarish landscape while desperately trying to stay alive. The simplicity of that premise is exactly what makes Resident Evil work so well.
Cregger, who previously directed Barbarian and Weapons, has demonstrated a willingness to tell stories that jump between characters, perspectives, and timelines. Resident Evil is considerably more straightforward. The movie primarily follows Bryan from beginning to end, with the story taking place over the course of one night and relatively little time passing between sequences. There is a genuine feeling that we are experiencing this night alongside him rather than jumping around a larger timeline to comprehend every corner of the outbreak. For a movie with a considerably larger scale, it is almost surprising how small Resident Evil feels in the best possible way. Instead of constantly cutting away to different characters and locations, Cregger keeps the camera with Bryan. We experience the outbreak through his perspective, and that makes every new threat feel immediate.
A huge part of that success comes from Abrams, who gives the movie an incredibly likable protagonist. Bryan is not the typical Resident Evil action hero. He is not Chris Redfield. He is not somebody who walks into a room, pulls out a gun, and effortlessly starts taking down zombies. Bryan is an ordinary guy who has absolutely no idea what he is doing, and that makes him infinitely more relatable. He is scared, he panics, he makes mistakes, he sometimes makes decisions that leave you wondering what he is going to do next, and somehow, he remains incredibly funny throughout all of it.
One of my favorite things about horror movies is imagining what I would actually say if I were trapped in the situations these characters find themselves in. Horror movies often require characters to remain serious while the audience is thinking about how absurdly terrifying the circumstances are. Bryan feels like the rare protagonist who reacts to these situations in a way that resembles how an actual person might react.
He mutters things to himself. He gets frustrated. He makes sarcastic observations. He occasionally seems completely overwhelmed by what is happening around him. Those little moments are hilarious because they never feel like the movie is desperately trying to insert jokes into a horror story. The humor comes naturally from Bryan’s personality and his increasingly ridiculous circumstances. He instantly becomes a relatable character, and we’re often making decisions with him in the moment.
Abrams knows exactly how to play that balance. Bryan can be terrified out of his mind in one moment and make you laugh seconds later, without either side of the performance feeling forced. More importantly, he never suddenly transforms into an action hero just because the movie needs him to. His objective is not to become the greatest zombie killer alive. It is simply to survive. That makes the violence feel more dangerous because Bryan does not possess the skills to handle it.
The movie also does a particularly good job of capturing the feeling of the Resident Evil games without directly adapting one of their stories. There are several moments that feel deliberately designed around the experience of playing a survival-horror game, including first-person shots that put us directly into Bryan’s perspective. At one point, Bryan even excitedly remarks that the situation feels like a video game, which is about as direct as the movie gets in acknowledging its own influences.
But the game-inspired elements never overwhelm the story. The movie evokes the sensation of being trapped inside an unfamiliar environment with a gun in your hand, desperately searching for ammunition while wondering what might be waiting around the next corner. Resources matter. Every encounter feels like it could go horribly wrong. Even the simple act of figuring out how to use a weapon becomes part of the tension because Bryan is not particularly good at it.
The snowy Raccoon City setting is another major strength. The cold, bleak landscape gives the movie a distinctive visual identity while making the city feel even more isolated and hostile. There is something particularly unsettling about watching Bryan attempt to navigate these environments while knowing that danger could emerge from virtually anywhere. And the movie moves. Resident Evil wastes very little time getting started, and once the outbreak begins, there is rarely an opportunity to breathe. Bryan is constantly moving toward his destination, and the audience is constantly wondering what obstacle will appear next. That momentum becomes one of the movie’s greatest assets. Rather than stopping every few minutes to explain another piece of mythology, the film trusts its premise and keeps going.
There is a surprisingly effective emotional foundation underneath all of this chaos, too. Bryan’s girlfriend is pregnant, giving him a personal reason to make it through the night beyond simply staying alive. He does not know how to handle this, and that gives the story an emotional weight that gradually becomes more important. That backstory is simple, but it works because the movie does not overcomplicate it. This is also why Resident Evil works even if you have never played the games. Unlike Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which attempted to incorporate recognizable characters and elements from the games, this is essentially an original story set within the Resident Evil universe. Hardcore fans looking for extensive references to the Umbrella Corporation, Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, or other major pieces of mythology may find themselves wanting more, although there are still some Easter eggs scattered throughout.
But the movie does not require that knowledge to be endlessly entertaining. At its core, Resident Evil is a zombie survival movie about an ordinary guy trying to accomplish an incredibly simple task under absolutely horrifying circumstances. It has strong jump scares, plenty of blood, shocking moments, dark humor, and a lead performance that holds the entire thing together. It may ultimately work better as a stand-alone zombie thriller than as a traditional Resident Evil adaptation, but there is nothing wrong with that. Cregger realizes that the best way to make us care about this world is to give us somebody worth following through it. And Austin Abrams makes Bryan somebody you want to follow.
Resident Evil does not need to reinvent the zombie movie or recreate every element of the games. It simply puts us in the shoes of one terrified, occasionally hilarious, completely unprepared man and asks us to survive the night alongside him.
SCORE: 8/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 8 equates to “Great.” While there are a few minor issues, this score means that the art succeeds at its goal and leaves a memorable impact.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended an early screening for our Resident Evil review.
Source: Comingsoon.net