New R-Rated Survival Sci-Fi Officially Crowned Highest-Rated Video Game Adaptation Ever

Resident Evil is the highest rated video game movie ever

It's official: Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil film is a hit with critics. The movie currently sits at a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest-rated video game movie on the site—it isn’t particularly close either. According to Rotten Tomatoes' Video Game Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer list, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is in second, and Werewolves Within is in third, both at 86%. According to the list, there are only three video game movies with a “Certified Fresh” rating, meaning they are above a certain percentage threshold and have a certain number of reviews.

After these first three entries, there are only six video game movies on the list with positive Tomatometer scores: The Angry Birds Movie 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Gran Turismo, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mortal Kombat II. Their scores range from 64% to 72%. This short list shows just how bad video game movies tend to be.

For clarity, the Tomatometer represents the percentage of critics who gave a movie a favorable review. This Rotten Tomatoes list excludes films that don’t have at least 20 reviews from theatrical releases. That said, the Rotten Tomatoes list consists of just a handful of movies. For instance, Exit 8, an adaptation of the game of the same name, has a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score with 176 reviews. Even so, Resident Evil iswell ahead of the competition.

Until now, video game adaptations have fared dramatically better on the small screen than in theaters, with great TV shows like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (100% on Rotten Tomatoes), Arcane (100%), Fallout (93%), The Last of Us (96%), Castlevania (94%), Nier: Automata Ver1.1a, and more.

Why is the film so highly rated?

Having seen Resident Evil, the movie delivers a tightly crafted 90 minutes of gross-out sequences, tense moments, and genuine hilarity. In a smart move, the film prioritizes being a good movie over being lore-accurate. While it doesn’t feature familiar characters, that works in its favor, because the movie perfectly emulates the games’ appeal, as the protagonist is forced into one terrible situation after another. Cregger, who previously directed Barbarian and Weapons, drops in plenty of humorous homages without requiring an encyclopedic knowledge of the lore. We'll find out how general audiences feel about the movie when it officially opens in theaters on Sept. 18.