‘Resident Evil’ review: Zach Cregger injects new life into blood-spattered zombie franchise
Until fairly recently, the words “video game adaptation” were enough to fill any film fan with terror, if not a little revulsion. 1993’s Super Mario Bros., Hollywood’s first live-action game adaptation, was famously such a disaster that it scared Nintendo away from movie licensing for 30 years. The roll call of pixellated characters who later made the leap from console to cinema screen wasn’t exactly encouraging. Hang your heads in shame, Lara Croft and Max Payne.
As gaming’s narrative qualities and film’s technical capabilities converged, however, it became apparent that the two mediums needn’t be kept as far apart as Ed Sheeran and Macklemore at the next awards ceremony. By the time everyone’s favourite moustachioed plumber made his grand big screen return with 2023’s perfectly respectable Super Mario Bros. Movie, even Sonic had successfully made the leap.
But Resident Evil? Surely Paul W. S. Anderson, who directed or produced all seven of the zombie franchise’s lumbering live-action adaptations, had – creatively, at least – helped to put the final bullet in the head of that one. Well, no: when a movie series has raked in more than $1.2bn (almost £900m) at the box office, you just know it’s not staying dead.
Thankfully, it seems scary movie maverick Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) likes a challenge (being bankrolled by PlayStation probably helped). Could his Resident Evil be the first great horror movie game adaptation? For a large chunk of the film’s runtime, the answer is a resounding yes. Like his aforementioned genre calling cards, it’s a wildly unpredictable mix of gore and ruthlessly executed jump scares, balanced with a knowingly comic tone that adds to the head-spinning chaos.
WATCH
The premise is as simple as it should be. Bryan (a perfectly cast Austin Abrams) is a hapless courier who’s been tasked with transporting a mysterious item to a hospital in Raccoon City. As he navigates icy back roads, his car hits a strange figure and he gets out to help her. Thus begins a seemingly never-ending series of nail-biting set-pieces that lead to his arrival at the metropolis, which has been overrun by some kind of flesh-eating apocalypse. Can he reach the safety of the hospital?
Cregger, who co-wrote the movie with rising screenwriter Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 4), has stayed true to the tenor of the games. The mission-like narrative is augmented by interactions that look like cutscenes, as when Bryan meets Carl (Paul Walter Hauser), a waxy representative of Umbrella, the evil corporation behind the outbreak. Ultimately, this proves a blessing and a curse: the movie’s first half is a white-knuckle ride, while the second descends into numbing repetition as Bryan battles yet another intensely gross bio-engineered monster.
By the end, it’s a bit like watching someone else play a game while you wait your turn. There’s the shadow of an idea that video games often (but by no means exclusively) offer refuge for young men on the cusp of adult responsibilities, though this is left frustratingly under-explored. Still, Cregger has proved it’s far from game over for Resident Evil.
Details
- Director: Zach Cregger
- Starring: Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis
- Release date: September 18 (in UK cinemas)
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.