'Resident Evil' Review: A Near-Perfect Sci-Fi Thriller That Never Steps Off the Gas
Overview & Key Takeaways
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil is horror movie about the absolute torture of playing horror games
Here’s a confession that may get me in trouble at a place like Polygon: I really don’t enjoy horror video games. It’s weird because I love scary movies. Ask me for my favorite film of all time, and I’ll answer Scream (or maybe Evil Dead II, depending on my mood). I look forward to each new Robert Eggers project the way most Americans count down the days to football season. But put a controller in my hands and force me to walk a muscly protagonist down a spooky hallway with two shotgun shells and a flashlight, and I’m suddenly the biggest scaredy-cat in the room. Heck, I once wrote an impassioned essay extolling the virtues of playing The Last of Us at full brightness.
The point is, I’ve always had a tricky relationship with horror games. I want to love them, but something inside of me refuses to engage. That’s why I can’t help but feel like Zach Cregger made his new movie just for me.
The director of breakout horror-comedies Barbarian and Weapons is back with a deliciously grotesque adaptation of the Resident Evil franchise. Anticipation is high. People really love these games — or love having strong feelings about them. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never made it through one, but I absolutely loved Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil.
Resident Evil opens in a hospital as a medical courier named Bryan (Weapons scene-stealer Austin Abrams) arrives late to deliver an unspecified organ. He’s about to head home to his girlfriend when a doctor flags him down and offers a high-paying delivery. All he has to do is drive the package to Raccoon City.
The crowd at my screening let out a delighted groan at the mention of Resident Evil’s iconic, zombie-infested locale. It was the first of many Easter egg references that don’t exactly break the fourth wall, but manage to bounce off it, leaving behind a small scratch or dent. By the end of the movie, that fourth wall is so dinged up it might as well be broken — and the audience loved every moment of it.
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The rest of Resident Evil unfolds somewhat predictably, though there’s enough unexpected jump scares to keep you from getting too relaxed. Bryan's trip is quickly derailed as the zombie apocalypse simmering in Raccoon City begins to boil up and spread outward. He travels (mostly on foot) from a small country house with video game tutorial vibes to a creepy tunnel to an even creepier sewer system before ultimately making his way through the city and arriving at a top-secret lab that just might be able to avert a zombie apocalypse.
Along the way, Bryan upgrades his weaponry from a pistol to a shotgun to a machine gun, and gets marginally better at shooting each of them. Cregger’s smartest choice is to cast Abrams as a bumbling everyman whose first instinct is to panic. It’s a much more relatable choice than some unflappable military tough guy, and much funnier too. You'll laugh every time Bryan aims his gun only to miss horribly, panics in a moment of crisis, or stares in wonder as some tentacled monster slithers toward him when he should be fighting back or at least running away. Abrams plays the role like a guy who wishes he could be playing this video game rather than actually living through it.
Cregger also wields video game logic to both fuel some of his funniest jokes and keep the plot moving at breakneck speed. There's a recurring gag in Resident Evil that padlocks are pretty much indestructible in this world (even to point-blank shotgun blasts), because in the games, the only way through a locked door is by solving a puzzle and finding the key. And as Bryan moves from one sequence to another (say by jumping down a manhole into the sewer below), whatever monster was chasing him instantly vanishes like it might in a game as you shift between levels and are given a quiet moment to restock and fuel.
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Like most Resident Evil-style games, the protagonist's story is also mostly a solitary experience. Bryan meets a handful of other characters along the way (many of them already infected and undead), but for the most part, it's up to Abrams to carry the plot on his own two narrow shoulders. The actor more than rises to the challenge, but there's only so much he can do on his own.
*Resident Evil'*s one weakness is that it might have been better if Bryan had a buddy. A brief sequence where Cregger pairs his star with an Umbrella Corporation agent played by Paul Walter Hauser only proves it. The two have such incredible chemistry that it makes me wish the entire movie was a buddy-horror-comedy. (Maybe that's the sequel?)
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The earliest reactions to Resident Evil compared it to Mad Max: Fury Road, painting the new film as some sort of ultra-stylish, ultra-violent, non-stop thrill ride. Having seen Resident Evil myself, I would say those comparisons are a huge stretch. (In hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have given much credence to what was clearly a sketchy report.) Resident Evil isn't as propulsive as Fury Road, and it's not as stylized either. It's a bleaker, smaller story told by a filmmaker deftly weaving his way into the tapestry of a much larger franchise without upsetting any preexisting canon.
But it's still a great horror movie, and a thrilling one too. Cregger takes his love for both the franchise and the genre and channels them into something we've never really seen before. Resident Evil is funny, scary, gross, and beautiful. Above all else, it captures the fight-or-flight experience of actually playing a Resident Evil game.
After watching the movie, I even feel inspired to try playing the games one more time. After all, if Bryan can force himself to keep taking one step forward even when he knows the only thing waiting for him is Cronenbergian horror, then what's stopping me from picking up a controller and doing the exact same thing?
Resident Evil releases in theaters on Sept. 18.
