Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil Captures the Game Experience Perfectly [overview]
When video games first started becoming more mainstream, it was only a matter of time before the likes of Mario and Pac-Man made their way into another form, usually terrible Saturday morning cartoons, which gave way to bad movies. The trouble, of course, is that even if there’s a “story” of Mario saving the Princess in the Mushroom Kingdom, or fighters assembling for the Outworld tournament in Mortal Kombat, games didn’t really have stories, meaning the movies had to do a lot of legwork for any kind of narrative. It’s how the reputation of “all video game movies are bad” began…and stuck around for decades.
As games themselves evolved, though, not only did the mechanics and gameplay change, but they got more sophisticated in their storytelling. That fast-forward has led us to Resident Evil (2026), the latest attempt at rebooting Capcom’s iconic franchise for the big screen, but one that takes a decidedly different approach than others. Fresh off the runaway success of his movies Barbarian and Weapons, Zach Cregger has opted to capture the feeling of playing a Resident Evil game rather than faithfully bringing the story of one to life. Though there are hints and teases from the series that gamers will recognize and point at, the film itself is instead a complete thrill ride that manages to compress all the anxieties, puzzle-solving, and running away that one would find in a modern survival-horror game. In that regard, it might be the best video game movie ever by default, but that doesn’t mean it has no shaky ground.
Rating: 4 out of 5
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Hilarious & scary in equal doses | There’s a moment where it stops in its tracks |
| Austin Abrams has great screen presence | |
| Truly disgusting monster design |
Resident Evil’s First Hour Is Basically Perfect
When Resident Evil starts, Austin Abrams’ Bryan already has his hands full. A fight with his girlfriend is ongoing while he’s trying to deliver something to a hospital, only to get roped into taking another job for the potential payout. He’s easy to root for immediately; not only does Abrams infuse him with charm, wit, and a sense of humor that make him relatable, but the ultimate choice of making an extra stack of cash might be the most understandable character motivation in any narrative for a 2026 audience.
Things don’t get better as his terrible car can hardly handle the ice and snow on the roads to Raccoon City, which leads to the first major surprise as a woman stumbles out of the woods and gets hit by his speeding vehicle. The escalation after this not only feels natural to the world that the movie is set in, but also always has a surprise up its sleeve. Cregger, who co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten, plays with audience expectations in enticing and fun ways, something to be expected after his last two movies.
The most distinct thing about Resident Evil is how he manages to walk the fine line between scares and humor, and how they can co-exist together in exciting ways. Cregger’s most distinct weapon as a director is, as Frank-N-Furter would say, the antici…………….. pation. He knows that you know what always happens in horror movies, and he uses that to his advantage as a director to always throw a surprise your way, be it a joke moment when you’re expecting a scare, or a fright when you think there’s a punchline coming. Sometimes, he even does both.
Resident Evil Captures Playing a Game (Sometimes to Its Detriment)
As noted, Cregger’s take on a Resident Evil movie was honing in on the things about playing a survival horror video game that feel intuitive and natural to gamers sitting down with a controller, but have to date been totally absent from the live-action takes on the franchise. This takes a few different forms, like Abrams desperately searching for ammunition, finding better weapons as he moves through the story, or even illuminating the thing in the environment that will become the next place he should go. The framing, pacing, and style all feel like someone who has played these games enough to know it in their bones, which means Cregger accomplished what he wanted as a filmmaker.
Perhaps one of the most satisfying moments of this comes when Bryan seems to have an easy path to escape, but the vehicle he’s found is blocked by a locked gate. Like any good gamer, he tries to shoot the giant padlock to no avail. When the threat gets too crazy, he takes the advice of the muttering audience member next to me and simply rams the car into the gate, but it goes spectacularly wrong. Had he followed the path of puzzle-solving like the games, he’d have found the key with the same symbol as the lock and gotten out.
It’s the little touches like this that make the first hour of Cregger’s movie feel almost perfect, like an experience that knows exactly what buttons to press, which knobs to turn, and how to fully capture the mood of what it’s like to play a scary game where you have no resources. Abrams’ character even embodies this by frequently muttering under his breath with the exact same jabs that any gamer safely planted on the couch might throw at a mutant dog that surprises them in a game.
Resident Evil Loses Steam in the End, But It’s Still a Blast
As Resident Evil is cruising along and Abrams is in full command of the screen, fully embodying the feelings of every audience member as he has to navigate disgusting encounters and bizarre mutations, there’s tragically a moment where the momentum comes to a halt. It’s a requisite exposition dump, not uncommon in games or movies, of course, but it’s almost like an audible brake in the movie itself.
Though Abrams does his best to keep the energy up, his character is stuck in an unskippable cutscene. It’s no fault of the other performers either, but after spending so much of the movie with Abrams, the presence of others just changes the entire energy of the film itself. After he manages to cut out on his own once again, it captures some of that power again and cruises along, elevating the horror and humor, only to have a final sequence that brings in more characters and loses its way a bit.
It’s something of a double-edged sword. Abrams is so good in Resident Evil, not only as the everyman found in video games but as the kind of guy who would play them, that any time the focus expands to include others, it kind of suffers for it. That said, the last 20 minutes have some truly disgusting monster effects that instantly make this a hoot to watch for horror fans, with a final shot that is tremendous.
Without spoiling, the final moments of Resident Evil might be unsatisfactory for some, but there’s something to it that makes it feel perfect when thinking about the franchise as a whole. There may well be plenty who don’t see this side and are miffed by the finale, but it’s actually one of the story decisions that works the best. That’s the most frustrating thing. Resident Evil is so, so close to being an almost perfect movie, and even if it’s not quite as good as Weapons or Barbarian, it’s mere percentage points that bring it down, and it’s still a total blast to watch in a full movie theater where you can scream and laugh with everyone.
