Resident Evil is one of the most recognisable horror brands out there. The video game franchise is a multi-million-dollar powerhouse comprised of 11 games, a 6-film franchise, a reboot, and a TV series, not to mention novels, comics, and spin off games. The last film, Welcome to Racoon City didn’t resurrect interest in a film adaptation and poured further fuel on the fire of discontent from RE fans towards cinematic adaptations. The feeling is that Resident Evil just isn’t made to work on the big screen. Zach Cregger may have just turned that around in the most bombastic of ways. Maybe.
Rather than following any set story line from the games or, controversially, use any of its iconic characters, we follow Bryan (Austin Abrams), a hapless courier rooked into delivering a high-priority package to Racoon City Hospital. Unfortunately, a wave of terrifying mutation has turned the city upside down and monstrous threats lurk behind every corner.
Cregger, hot off the Oscar winning success of Weapons, is a strange match for the Resident Evil universe. This feels like a time-out for him, a big, daft, adrenaline ride after two meticulous original horror films. It doesn’t have the same narrative, or thematic, clout and his characteristic originality. Cregger is clearly playing to a more general audience.
It’s broad strokes horror populated with quick-fix jump scares (some of which are deliciously gross) and action beats. That pace, the constant fleeing from one gruesome set piece to the next, is its greatest strength and weakness. The result? A rollercoaster through different flavours of Resident Evil, where few moments get the time to breathe or inspire any deep-seated dread. It makes a lot of the film feel slapdash in hindsight, but in the moment it’s easy to get infected by the mania of it all.
Saying that its easy to get pulled out again by the grating infantile humour. Resident Evil’s biggest problem is the fact its hero is just plain annoying; the out-loud narration, the incessant panicked swearing, and the shitty one-liners, constantly hobble the film’s tone. The characterisation did not need to be this belligerently irritating. Watching Abrams do the Buster Keaton routine through a horror twist on After Hours sounds like a blast, but it would have been better without a teen-appeasing sense of humour. Cregger is unsure who to write the film for but thankfully he’s surer on how to technically translate game to screen.
Cregger’s focus on camera work, the replication of a first- or third-person shooter, is commendably immersive. The understated synthy score evokes Carpenter levels of cool, the visuals (especially those early snow-coated woods), do more for mood than any of the gratuitous frights. There’s a wonderful sense of spatial awareness, the way direction, distance, and landmarks are used really helps the whole environment feel like a real place.
The creature design is terrific too and easily one of the film’s boons. For a franchise built off the backs of the living dead, Cregger’s Resident Evil seems almost ashamed of the Z-word, but it pays off with some horrifying results. The games never relied purely on zombies; the horror of the T-Virus was always OTT mutation. So kudos to Cregger for leaning into the weirder side of the franchise and its resultant body horror.
Anyone saying Resident Evil is Cregger’s best film needs to have a word with themselves. It’s a fun trip through the dark heart of Racoon City; a series of grizzly set pieces flown past, ran through, and escaped from. It’s exhilarating, daft, gooey, gory, entertaining, and a greatest hits of Resi’s mutation-centric threats squashed snuggly into 94 minutes. Lose the cringey humour, and this could have been pretty perfect. It doesn’t feel like the full stop on the debate of whether the games fit into movies, but it’s a great showcase of what a Resi adaptation could be.
3/5
Scott Clark
Dir. Zach Cregger
Stars. Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser,
