Resident Evil (2026)

Resident Evil is directed by Zach Cregger who made the oscar-winning Weapons (2025) and stars Austin Abrams of Walking Dead fame. This film has been hyped up for weeks ever since it was announced. I managed to catch it premiere day with a couple of friends, and I think the hype is kind of deserved. 

This review contains spoilers.

Instead of following well known characters from the game, this movie takes the perspective of a hapless medical courier who just so happened to wander into the zombie-infested town of Raccoon City the day of the outbreak. Bryan, our main character, is completely out of his death as he fails to land shots and fails to come up with witty one-liners. His character is mostly charming, especially in the first half of the film before the gimmick gets old. His whole journey is about delivering the medical package so he can get home to his pregnant girlfriend. Right before entering the town, unaware of the danger, Bryan starts arguing with his girlfriend about whether or not they should keep the baby. Call drops. Zombie appears. He never gets to speak to her again. 

That leads me into my first criticism of the film. Every horror movie, no matter how badly made, has some kind of emotional moment with the main character to make the danger more impactful. This is always my least favourite part of the movie since between scares, villains, and survival plots there is never enough time to flesh out the emotional beats. Films always fall on the same tired trope of "He has a kid! A family! A dead person!". Resident Evil does the exact same thing. I'd still root for Bryan to survive if his girlfriend got an abortion. 

This plotline does not impact his character. There's a very frustrating scene in the first third of the film where his girlfriend calls the house he's in to try and contact him and Bryan just stares at the phone. He makes no effort to connect with the girl he's supposed to be fighting to get back to. Later on he weepily records a voice memo for her, which could be a tearjerker if they didn't interrupt it with a cheap joke right after. 

"Stupid... fucking... monsters..."

The comedy of the movie is mostly fantastic. I laughed just as much as I jumped which makes this a fantastic watch in my book. The biggest issue I have is when the comedy starts to drag down the plot. Bryan gets picked up by two government workers to help him make the delivery. For no given reason, the one guard of the group leaps out of the vehicle so she can be killed off screen for cheap comedy. It is very jarring and pointless. Nobody mentions her before or after this. Also at the end, when Bryan is infected and he's waiting for the scientists to finish the cure, the comedic relief is supposed to be how incompetent the scientists all are. The scene is painfully long as you watch these bumbling morons ignore lab safety, destroy protocol, and limp through very basic laboratory procedures. It's actually painful. Every character except for Bryan was a moronic comedic relief or they died within five minutes. 

After all that, however, I only have positives. 

The monster design was fantastic. I loved the title card and the soundtrack was thrilling. Hays and Ryan Holladay did an incredible job. There were so many moments my heart was in my throat just from the music alone. 

It is a fantastic video game adaptation with plenty of references to the games with first person camera angles, save points, and the weapons progression. I enjoyed every joke where Bryan fails to shoot a padlock off a door and fails. The posters are beautiful. I love the way the blood red colour cuts through the ashen city landscape. 

"I fucking suck at guns."

Most of the horror factor comes from jumpscares, which adds to the video game feel of the film. The jumpscares are well done and I did have a hard time predicting where the next one would come from. It is overall a fantastic experience even though it suffers from a weak story. 

I'd suggest this to fans of Resident Evil, Zach Cregger enjoyers, and horror fanatics. Bryan does swear way more than needed in every line so if you don't like pointless cussing tirades I would skip this one.