[5]
Writer/director Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) lends his strong directorial efforts and a healthy sense of humor to the Resident Evil film franchise, based on a popular series of action/horror video games. Milla Jovovich starred in a slew of these films between 2002 and 2016. I’ve seen none of these movies and I’ve never played the video game either. So my opinion of this new 2026 reboot is one that takes the film on its own merits. Is it faithful to the video games or past movies? I couldn’t tell you. To me, it’s just another horror movie.
The film hits the ground running, with Austin Abrams (terrific in Weapons) playing a courier who drives transplant organs between hospitals. On one snowy night, en route with a life-saving delivery, a woman runs out of the woods and in front of his car. Abrams soon realizes she’s not a normal human being — she’s infected with violent disease that mutates her body at will. She chases him to a farmhouse, where Abrams encounters another person and a dog who are both infected — signaling a terrifying, mysterious outbreak of some kind.
Resident Evil feels very much like a video game as it flits from one suspenseful survival sequence to the next, which will no doubt make it appealing to attention-deficit youngsters more than old fogies like me who crave story and substance. Abrams reacts to everything with a darkly comedic incredulity that makes the experience more engrossing than procedural. But there’s only a scant over-arching narrative. Abrams’ character learns his delivery package is a vital ingredient to a cure some scientists are working on in a hospital high-rise. He essentially has to make the delivery to save the world — and, after he’s bitten by one of these infected monsters, he’s trying to save himself, too.
I don’t know if die hard horror fans will take a shine to this movie or not. If you’ve seen many zombie or outbreak movies, you’ve pretty much already seen this one. But if all you’re looking for is ‘another one’, then this will suffice. The gore and horror manifests in ways that owe everything to John Carpenter and Rob Bottin’s work on The Thing, but it’s never as good as The Thing. The action gets repetitious and about half-way through the movie, I was craving some deeper, more sophisticated storytelling. Unfortunately, that’s just not what this movie was made for.
There are, however, two things that pull Resident Evil from the ‘bad movie’ zone and into the mediocre zone for me. One: Cregger’s direction is tight. He builds tension and suspense throughout, so much so that the film actually becomes fatiguing. And two: Austin Abrams gives a remarkably strong performance. He’s a very charismatic, likable guy whose self-deprecating humor quickly endears him to the audience. He makes this one-note adventure much more entertaining than it would have been otherwise.
With Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, and Kali Reis.