Review: RESIDENT EVIL Is a Resident Evil Movie That Feels Like Resident Evil and It's Awesome Fun!

I’ve been waiting a very long time to say this about a live-action Resident Evil movie… They finally freakin’ got it! As a huge fan of the video game franchise, I’ve had a complicated relationship with the movies over the years.

I’ve enjoyed several of them for what they are, and some have delivered plenty of ridiculous action and cool horror, but none of them have completely captured what I love about playing these games. Zach Creggerfinally cracked it.

His Resident Evil, starring Austin Abrams, is the most Resident Evil movie ever made because it understands that this franchise is supposed to be scary, gross, funny, unpredictable, violent, ridiculous, and occasionally so insane that you can’t believe what you’re looking at.

Cregger takes all of that and builds an original story around it rather than simply recreating one of the games. The result is a bloody, gory, hilarious survival-horror ride that feels like somebody took the experience of playing Resident Evil, injected it with cinematic adrenaline, and blasted it onto the big screen.

I had an absolute blast with this movie, and while I do have a few issues with it, they were completely overwhelmed by how much fun I was having.

The sstory is wonderfully simple. Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier who is given one final assignment on a freezing, snowy night. He has to transport a high-priority package to Raccoon City Hospital as quickly as possible. That’s the mission. Get the package from Point A to Point B.

Easy enough, right? Unfortunately for Bryan, he’s in a Resident Evil movie, so his delivery route quickly turns into the worst night imaginable. Almost immediately, everything starts going horribly wrong, and from there the movie becomes one giant exercise in escalation.

Every time Bryan survives one horrible situation, something even more screwed up is waiting for him. His resources evolve right along with the threats. He starts small, gets his hands on a handgun, eventually upgrades to a shotgun, and the weapons keep getting bigger as the monsters get increasingly nasty.

It feels exactly like progressing through one of the games, right down to those moments where Bryan has no reasonable option except to walk into some horrible dark place that anyone with functioning survival instincts would avoid. Dark tunnel filled with potential nightmare fuel? Well, buddy, the hospital is on the other side, so I guess we’re going through the damn tunnel.

What makes all of this work so well is Abrams, because this movie is largely riding on his shoulders. There are other characters who pop in and out of the story, but for the most part, Resident Evil is Bryan’s increasingly terrible adventure, and Abrams gives the character the perfect underdog quality.

Bryan isn’t some unstoppable badass casually slaughtering monsters while looking cool. He’s a normal guy who gets scared, frustrated, confused, angry, exhausted, and completely baffled by the increasingly absurd crap happening around him. That made him incredibly easy for me to relate to.

There were several moments where he would mutter something to himself, react to a frustrating situation, or say something out loud and I found myself laughing because I’ve done the exact same thing. Obviously, I’ve never said those things while running from a mutated monstrosity in Raccoon City, but I recognized the reaction.

I saw little pieces of myself in Bryan, and that made me want to follow this poor bastard wherever the movie was dragging him. He’s terrified and confused, but he keeps going. No matter what disgusting nightmare crawls into his path, Bryan finds some way to press forward because he has a job to finish and, more importantly, he would very much like to remain alive.

The comedy is also a huge part of why the movie works. The audience I watched it with was laughing throughout the film, and it wasn’t because the horror failed. The comedy actually makes the horror better because Cregger understands when to release the pressure before tightening the screws again.

Bryan’s reactions are funny because there comes a point where the insanity surrounding him becomes so absurd that laughter is practically the only reasonable response. Then, right when you’re comfortable and laughing, the movie smacks you with another scare. And this damn movie actually got me!

I watch a lot of horror, and I’ve become pretty desensitized to jump scares. I can appreciate a good one, but I’m rarely the guy making noise in the theater. At one point during Resident Evil, I let out an audible gasp. An actual noise escaped my body before my brain had time to stop it.

I sat there afterward almost offended that the movie managed to catch me that badly. I have to applaud it for that because it just doesn’t happen to me anymore. Cregger manages to balance the humor, scares, tension, gore, action, and complete lunacy in a way that keeps the movie moving without turning the horror into a joke.

The creatures are another big reason this feels so authentically Resident Evil. Of course, the Umbrella Corporation is involved because apparently no amount of catastrophic biological horror can convince those people to stop screwing around with things they absolutely shouldn’t be touching.

There are recognizable elements that fans will pick up on, but Cregger doesn’t build the entire movie around dragging familiar monsters onto the screen so audiences can point at them. Instead, he comes up with some wonderfully disgusting new creations to torment Bryan, and I’m not going to spoil any of them.

Discovering what horrible thing is waiting around the next corner is part of the experience. Some of these creatures are disturbing, some are hilariously twisted, and some made me wonder what kind of messed-up brainstorming session produced them.

The unpredictability is fantastic because that’s such an important part of Resident Evil. When I play these games, I love the nervous anticipation of opening a door or walking down a hallway without knowing what might be waiting for me.

Cregger recreates that feeling without copying a particular game. You might think you know what’s about to happen, but the movie keeps twisting situations into something stranger, grosser, or more ridiculous than expected.

The decision to keep us so closely attached to Bryan is one of the movie’s biggest strengths, but it’s also where some of my issues come in. We’re basically trapped in this nightmare with him, and if Bryan doesn’t know what’s happening, neither do we.

That makes the survival horror incredibly effective, but it also means the larger scope of the situation doesn’t hit as hard as I wanted it to. This is Resident Evil, a franchise filled with Umbrella conspiracies, viruses, biological weapons, enormous disasters, and people making spectacularly stupid scientific decisions that threaten countless lives.

The movie gives us enough worldbuilding to understand what’s happening, but I wanted a little more of it. I occasionally wanted the story to pull back and let me feel the full scale of this disaster. The same thing applies to Bryan’s emotional journey.

We get some material involving his girlfriend Michelle and the problems in their relationship, which helps establish who Bryan is before his evening descends into monster-filled hell, but the movie moves so quickly that there isn’t much room to deepen that emotional side of the story.

I liked Bryan, cared about him, and absolutely wanted him to survive, but I think there was an opportunity to make that connection hit even harder.

Those issues didn’t bother me nearly as much as I expected because Cregger clearly knows what kind of movie he wants to make. This isn’t a giant Resident Evil mythology lesson. It’s essentially a survival-horror video game transformed into a movie, and judged on that experience, this thing freakin’ rips.

There’s an objective, a destination, limited resources, increasingly powerful weapons, horrific enemies, environmental obstacles, and one exhausted dude desperately trying to survive long enough to complete his mission. The action gets crazier, the gore gets nastier, and the creatures become increasingly outrageous while Bryan keeps dragging himself toward and through Raccoon City Hospital.

I love the simplicity of it. All this guy wants to do is deliver one damn package, and the universe responds by throwing every possible nightmare at him. It also leads into an ending that genuinely surprised me.

I’m not going anywhere near spoilers because I think people should experience where Cregger takes this story without knowing what’s coming. I wasn’t quite sure how the movie was going to wrap everything up, and when it got there, it definitely wasn’t what I expected. I’m extremely curious to see how audiences and longtime fans react to it.

Ultimately, Resident Evil gave me something I’ve wanted from this franchise on the big screen. I walked out of this movie energized by how much damn fun I had. Cregger understood that making a great Resident Evil adaptation isn’t about copying a game scene by scene or cramming the screen with recognizable characters and monsters.

It’s about capturing the experience of playing these games: the dread of walking into a dark hallway, the relief of finding a better weapon, the panic when something horrible suddenly comes charging at you, and the increasingly ridiculous realization that the nightmare somehow keeps getting worse.

This movie is violent, bloody, gory, scary, hilarious, disgusting, completely bonkers, and ridiculously entertaining. If you’re into horror movies, creature features, survival horror, or you’re a longtime Resident Evil fan like me, this is one hell of a ride.

After years of waiting for a live-action adaptation that actually captures what makes these games so much fun, I can finally say it, this is the Resident Evil movie I’ve been waiting for.