Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie dares to ask the important question: “What if an absolute dumbass was the star of one of Capcom’s survival horror stories?” Even as something that was ostensibly at one point meant to be a parallel story to Resident Evil 2, the film is less an adaptation of the series than a vibes-based homage. It borrows the aesthetics of Capcom’s games and then, surprisingly enough, mixes in unflinching slapstick comedy that feels straight out of Cregger’s Whitest Kids U’Know sketch comedy days rather than leaning into the series’ usual brand of self-seriousness. Resident Evil purists will no doubt be annoyed by his hero’s constant quips and exasperation as he goes from regular dude trying to do his job to having a no good, very bad night full of zombie-like monstrosities, but the movie works best when viewed as a 95-minute spoof with a few gross-out moments and an occasional scare than as an attempt to faithfully adapt the franchise’s typical story beats.
Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier delivering cooled organs and the like to hospitals in and around Raccoon City, was already having a stressful night when he was contracted to deliver some mysterious, high-priority medical package to the origin point of Resident Evil 2’s outbreak. The earliest moments in the film show him struggling to juggle his job and home responsibilities. His girlfriend Michelle is back home trying to have important discussions about their future over an unstable phone signal as he drives into the heart of Raccoon City, only for him to become so distracted by the call that he hits a woman mindlessly walking out into the road.
Once Bryan gets out of his car to help the woman and finds that she is miraculously still alive, he attempts to put her in his car to take her to the hospital, at which point she spends the rest of the car ride frequently grabbing at him while strapped in by her seatbelt. The viewer knows she’s obviously infected by a Resident Evil-ass virus, but Bryan doesn’t, which leads to some humorous scenes as he tries to maintain some level of composure before getting pulled over by a cop.
It’s at this point that Resident Evil starts showing its hand, and will likely lose some of the audience entirely while giving others something new to latch onto. Rather than leaning into the games’ campy zombie soap opera tendencies, Cregger’s movie opts for an Evil Dead-like absurdism and it’s pretty up front about. Bryan’s an idiot that is incompetent with a gun and other survival gear, so you will not be watching a near-invincible member of the BSAA rocking some zombies’ shit for 90 minutes. Instead, Resident Evil is an hour-and-a-half of Abrams delivering his most believable Let’s Play horror streamer reactions as he is faced with nightmares of human hubris beyond his comprehension until he’s left swearing, stammering, and sprinting away from them as fast as his legs can carry him.
There’s some earnestness to be found in the margins. Bryan’s very real fears about his future are reflected in the form of the monsters he faces. But by and large, Resident Evil is a grotesque comedy, and when that becomes clear in the first 30 minutes, it’s really on folks to decide if they’re down for that or going to get off the ride. Cregger’s story doesn’t let up with the gags and quips even during its climactic moments.
I’m not an adaptation purist on principle, but I will admit, part of me watched the movie and could feel what some fans’ criticism would be, even beyond the questions about its place in the larger series. Coming into a Resident Evil movie and finding something that almost never takes itself seriously, certainly not enough to be considered truly “scary” much of the time, is going to rub some folks the wrong way. The movie’s gross as all hell, with some of the creatures Bryan faces even surpassing some of the horrors of recent Resident Evil games, but its inability to maintain tension for more than a moment keeps it from feeling truly terrifying, and instead the absurdity takes precedence as the primary mood.
Bryan almost feels isekai’d into the Resident Evil universe with his inability to play the horrors of the outbreak straight. Whether I could buy into it varied wildly depending on what he was doing in any given moment. Resident Evil is a master at making Bryan see something horrifying, say some variation of “ew, what the fuck,” escalating it to the next, unthinkable level of gross, and then treating him like a Looney Tunes character who still somehow comes out the other side unscathed. It’s only his own inner demons and the symbolic outward manifestations of them that actually harm him as he squirms out of the grasp of the nastiest creepy crawlies.
Resident Evil captures the spirit of the games not through the specifics of its world or by dropping needless cameos into the mix, but in trying to channel the experience of being a big ol’ scaredy-cat trying to maintain some semblance of composure when the nastiest monstrosity is running toward you. In a sense, the act of playing a horror game is one of buying into the slightly embarrassing and silly premise of being preyed upon by terrifying, unknowable monsters that can’t actually hurt you and trying to laugh it off.
How much you’ll enjoy Resident Evil will largely depend on how much you’re willing to keep buying into the absurdity of scaring yourself on purpose. It’s an adaptation of the experience of playing Resident Evil more than a live-action recreation of any of the specifics of the franchise itself. It’s meta. It doesn’t take itself that seriously, and even if I found myself slightly annoyed at how one-note Bryan’s constant antics are throughout, I liked it most when I didn’t watch it as if it was on trial and justifying its existence to series fans.
English (US) ·