Resident Evil Review: Zach Cregger's Adaptation Is A Masterclass In Gorgeously Gruesome Horror

Retaining his distinct, grisly charm while perfectly recreating the tone of playing the original games, Zach Cregger nails it with Resident Evil.

At their underlying core, there are two types of film adaptations. The first is a literal retelling of a narrative, a fresh version that retains much of the same overarching story structure and character development. The other is a more liberal approach. It comes with more creative freedom, removing the guardrails of plot and instead operating almost entirely on a “vibes first” principle.

This second type wants to feel like the source material, but remix it into something else entirely, often in the name of reflecting the filmmaker's distinct vision. It's a riskier proposition, especially when the source material is beloved, but one that can have real creative dividends.

This is a long-winded way of saying the new Resident Evil is terrific. Zach Cregger's loose riff on the classic Capcom horror video game series takes clear inspiration from the feeling of playing the games instead of recreating the wild game continuity. This proves to be a deft choice by the Weapons director, who uses it as a launching pad for something that feels more intimate and frightening. Bolstered by the same craft and creativity that made Cregger's last two features so effective, Resident Evil is a great (and bleak) horror movie that goes for the jugular to arrive at the core of the horror experience.

Resident Evil Is A Gamer's Experience Filtered Through Zach Cregger's Imagination

Immediately diverging from the kind of continuity and tone that defined both the original games and the previous live-action adaptations, this Resident Evil never goes too far into the lore or circumstances of this world, instead staying on the track of its straightforward, effective plot. Instead of following any commandos or cops, the movie focuses on medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams). Struggling with the existential terror of finding out his girlfriend is unexpectedly pregnancy, he takes a last-minute job to deliver a mysterious package to Racoon City General hospital.

His venture into the mountains takes a sharp turn when a wandering woman gets struck by Bryan's car, and everything spirals from there. The film follows a fairly beat-for-beat plot, with Bryan repeatedly encountering a new setting on his way into the city and doing his best to survive. Structurally, there is a clear recreation of the advancement structure present in video games, complete with new enemy types and monstrous mutations discovered along the way. This isn't a complaint; Resident Evil is engaging with the experience of gaming, even as it tells its own story.

The streamlined narrative leaves room for Cregger's distinctly hilarious gallows humor and talent for horrifying image-making, taking cues from the games while also utilizing the broader lore for inspiration. Some of these monster reveals are pure Cregger – a memorably bloody maternity ward in the latter half of the film that is beautifully nightmarish.

With this tonal approach, there's not much room for human drama, though Austin Abrams does great work anchoring a movie that could easily feel aimless without a solid driving force. His performance ensures his dumb decisions make sense in the moment, and his few shining moments of pathos hit. Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Zach Cherry make memorable appearances, but they play very much one-note characters the audience encounters on their adventure with Bryan.

Resident Evil Is A Terrific Adaptation Because Of What It Leaves Out

Resident Evil feels perfectly cut down to a lean, mean monster movie. There's not a lot of complexity, but it brushes up against some more thematically rich material and chooses not to fully engage with it. Instead, it stays focused on being scary, funny, and surprisingly sad – and is a more entertaining film for it.

More than anything, what makes Resident Evil stand out in a modern landscape is the commitment to being firmly its own thing. Almost none of the Easter eggs or deep-cut references are to the recognizable lore, to the point where even the infected are largely and recognizably different sorts of monsters than the zombies in the games.

Die-hard fans looking for allusions to heroes like Leon Kennedy will be disappointed. Instead, the movie references game mechanics, enemy types, and item discoveries that reflect the feeling of playing a Resident Evil experience. Speaking as a long-time fan of the original games, it works tremendously well at taking the terror, tension, and even bursts of triumph from the game experience and filtering them through Cregger's distinct sense of humor, powerful satirical perspective, and genuinely unsettling creations.

This is the most John Carpenter-inspired film I've ever seen, but it reflects the style of the filmmaker so clearly that it's unmistakably by the same auteur behind Barbarian and Weapons. Clever in its cinematography, audacious in its horror, and bluntly hilarious through its dim-witted protagonist – seriously, the cheer of "Yeah! Video games!" at a climactic moment is primed to be memed – Resident Evil is kind of everything I hoped it would be.

While the ending's shift in tone and style into something more Sam Raimi-esque, combining goofball, gory nonsense and blunt bleakness, might be a hard shift, it all comes together. This movie takes the kind of brutal swings The Walking Dead never could. A pitch-perfect horror movie that is as frightening and funny as it is shockingly somber, Resident Evil may annoy series purists, but will win over any horror fan.

Resident Evil releases in theaters nationwide on Friday, September 18.