The spectrum of video game films in Hollywood is peculiar to witness in terms of popularity. Film adaptations of beloved games went from being widely panned and seen as box office poison (which the earlier Resident Evil films were prime suspects of) to now potentially being the next franchise cow, more than primed for milking. What’s even more fascinating from this viewpoint, however, is the way that the approach to adapting video game material has evolved. Quality hasn’t necessarily changed in most adaptations; more so, their goals of fan appeasement have reached top priority on the list of filmmaking, leading to scenarios where some video game films offer almost nothing but fan service.
This is precisely what makes Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil such a breath of fresh air that hasn’t been executed this successfully in a video game movie before. Cregger implements many hallmarks of classic survival games to make each horror set piece worthy of the increasing escalation throughout the 90-minute runtime while still maintaining a playful energy with its huge laughs and genuine hair-raising scares. Cregger has more than proven his strengths as a genre filmmaker with Barbarian and Weapons, and Resident Evil is a great combination of all his greatest strengths as a filmmaker to make for an absolute blast that contains clever jump scares and knee-slapping laughs side by side. With Austin Abrams anchoring the picture with his delightfully goofy lead performance, Cregger’s Resident Evil takes the admittedly not-super-high bar of being one of the best video game films in recent memory.
The setup here is nearly as simple as you can get, which is more than fine for this film’s structure, as we start with Bryan (Abrams), a medical courier making what he thinks will be his last drop-off of the night at a hospital for the day as he mulls over surgeons not signing for their deliveries and uncertain feelings over his girlfriend’s, Michelle, pregnancy over the phone. Things kick into gear almost immediately once Bryan is offered double his rate to deliver one more mysterious item to Raccoon City General Hospital.
He decides to take the gig, despite his car not being prepared for the harsh, snowy weather, seeing it as another payday before he heads home, but things take a turn for the worse when he runs over a woman walking straight into the icy road. Bryan tries to set his course straight by taking the woman to the hospital, but once he’s pulled over by police, a chain of progressively worsening events begins for Bryan as he finds himself in a fight for survival against supernatural chaos and mutating zombies galore.
As an adaptation of most mainline Resident Evil games, there are plenty of easter eggs and nods to hallmarks of the games that even more casual fans will recognize, but the video game touchstones of Resident Evil take things a step further. Cregger makes both the story and structure of Bryan’s progressively crappy journey relatively straightforward, but it’s only purposeful to fully make the film a survival video game of its own without sacrificing any genre pulpiness.
So many POV shots are utilized where we can see what Bryan aims at when holding a gun to blast away zombies—full manic tracking shots, camera pans, and swerves one step ahead of Bryan’s next step. We even get check-ins on how many bullets he has left after the latest set piece of pure madness. Cregger is fully embracing many of the small aspects that make up playing survival video games (like the Resident Evil franchise) within the template of stripped-back survival horror, and it makes the film’s presentation capture the thrilling essence of a reality where you’re actually playing as Bryan in a video game for a madcap 90 minutes.
Cregger’s blend of horror and humor is nothing new, as there exists a similar method for executing both, even though they set out to accomplish different forms of entertainment; this is his most successful meld of the two genres yet. Much of the comedy is either playing at situational or near-adjacent bumbling slapstick, and there’s rarely, if ever, a miss. It’s so fun to see a film that’s knowingly playful with its inherent goofy charms, and it only makes the moments where the film sets out to scare the pants out of its audience hit even harder while you’re off guard.
There exists such a showoff nature to the way Cregger is able to so effectively sell jump scares in his features, where there always exists an innovative setup to the way each one is executed. Sometimes the film will knowingly fool you into thinking a scare is coming before it actually hits you while your guard is down, or throws imagery at you like the stuff of nightmares (like the famous limbs-through-the-door moment present in the trailers). What Cregger truly excels at, however, is his use of sound and unseen terror that truly sells every moment.
The copious amount of body horror and goopy gore played with here is always effective, of course, but they hit even harder when they seemingly come out of nowhere despite little drops of scare being planted early on. A thump in the night in a house off the road won’t be followed up until you forget about it and pops out at just the right moment; seconds of calm can be followed up all of a sudden by a zombie dog from hell bursting through a window, ready to swallow you whole. The giddy method at which the film follows up a genuinely chilling sequence with a joke that will have you in stitches is a testament to such simple but greatly utilized skill. Cregger is always ten steps ahead of his audience to make things as unpredictable as possible, and it only makes the further escalation of the set pieces, as Bryan’s journey gets more insane, increasingly entertaining to watch.
The glue holding all the scares and laughs together, without which this film would fall apart, is Austin Abrams in such a delightfully silly performance where he essentially gets his own version of off-the-wall Evil Dead-esque insanity. There are some great running gags, with a hilarious highlight being one involving shooting off locks, and bumbling tomfoolery galore, but the best aspect of the performance is how committed Abrams is physically as this guy having the worst night of his life.
The film has straight-up comedic pratfalls and slapstick that feel at one with early Charlie Chaplin films, which is especially impressive given that, for most of the film, it’s a one-man show with Abrams. Other characters could have more of a presence, with roles from Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Zach Cherry later on. If there’s anywhere where Resident Evil loses a bit of steam, it’s when it starts to divert a bit from its simple, suspense-filled setup once more characters are introduced and what’s in Bryan’s package is revealed. Still, the film is more than effective at the thrills it sets out to achieve.
Resident Evil is yet another lean, mean, and hilarious genre exercise from Zach Cregger that not only delivers on the gory horror thrills and zany comedy many will be looking for, but also utilizes the mechanics of the best survival video games to make the most of its presentation within a 90-minute thrill ride. With Austin Abrams as the comedic gold at the core of what makes this picture work, Resident Evil reinvigorates both the titular franchise and the video game film in general for the better, and is sure to appease fans of the games and regular horror fans alike.
Resident Evil will debut exclusively in theaters on September 18, 2026, courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
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Resident Evil is yet another lean, mean, and hilarious genre exercise from Zach Cregger that not only delivers on the gory horror thrills and zany comedy many will be looking for, but also utilizes the mechanics of the best survival video games to make the most of its presentation within a 90-minute thrill ride.
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GVN Rating
Lover of film writing about film. Member of the Dallas Fort-Worth Critics Association. The more time passes, the more the medium of movies has become deeply intertwined with who I am.
