Resident Evil: Adaptation Done (Mostly) Right
After Zach Cregger’s most recent production, last year’s Oscar-winning horror film, Weapons, he was rewarded with his “blank check movie.” When it was announced that he would be using this opportunity to direct an adaptation of the video game series Resident Evil, I and many others couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.
Resident Evil (2026) is a film that has a lot to live up to. It had to satisfy fans of horror, who, after having a great year with films like Obsession and Backrooms, might have higher standards than usual. It would have to satisfy fans of Zach Cregger’s previous work, keeping his tone intact while preserving the horror-comedy tone of the games themselves to satisfy the fans of the series. Of course, it would have to do all of this and still come out the other end as a good movie.
So did it succeed? Did Cregger succeed in his ambitious venture? Well, mostly!
For those who have no knowledge of the Resident Evil games, an introduction is likely in order. With the original release hitting shelves in 1996 for the PlayStation 1, the game has since spanned 9 mainline games with various spin-offs along the way. The franchise, with age, has bridged several genres from survival horror to action, with the throughline being that in each game there is some kind of virus made by the Umbrella Corporation that has caused some sort of zombie outbreak. Unrelated, but my first intro to the series was when I was around six; I watched my dad play Resident Evil 4 and then had nightmares about the freaky-looking centipede boss that night. But, surprisingly, that’s about all you need to know about the series itself for the movie because it is very removed from the plot of the games. It has none of the characters from the games, and the virus is pretty different from those encountered in the games; the only real ties to the series are the setting and Umbrella Corp. This, I think, is to its strength; many video game movies are obsessed with constantly pandering to series fans, and forget that they are ultimately trying to be good movies. The film seems aware of this for the most part and, instead of leaning into it, pokes fun at “video game logic” like shooting locks or ramming cars through gates. This is not to say it completely forsakes its source material; one thing which I thought was quite novel was the choice to shoot some scenes using a camera rig to make it appear in first-person view with the gun in frame like the games. I think this is a good nod to the series without being overbearing and adding a greater sense of fear to the scenes.
This film takes place over the course of one night; a medical courier named Bryan (Austin Abrams) is tasked with taking an important package to a hospital in Raccoon City. Along the way, he encounters zombies and other horrifying creatures. One thing that I loved about this movie was just how interconnected it felt; due to the fairly simple premise of going from point A to point B in one night, it naturally lends itself to cinematic reminders of just how far–or how little–Bryan has progressed. One specific instance I liked was a shot of Bryan approaching a house in a large field. Juxtaposed with the darkness of the night, you can clearly see the lights shining from the wrecked car from a few scenes prior, and to the right, closer to the foreground, you can see the barn from the previous scene. There are more examples of this mise-en-scène in the film, but for the sake of not spoiling anything, I won’t mention them.
Resident Evil (2026), like the games, is at its core a horror comedy. So while there is Cronenberg-esque body horror, there is just as much levity and jokes to balance it. The film is loaded with bits, and a lot of these jokes only work due to the strength of the performance by Austin Abrams. The main theme behind most of the jokes is that an everyman happens to find himself in bad places at really bad times. While a film like this runs the risk of having a “he’s right behind me, isn’t he” humor, Cregger, being a former sketch comedian himself, largely avoids these pitfalls. However, there is one example of this that is so bad that I can’t help but bring it up: after killing this huge zombie that has been following him for a good chunk of the film, he yells “video games!” This ‘joke’ completely took me out of the film and really made me wonder where exactly I went wrong in life. Besides that, however, I would say that the comedy lands.
Couple this comedy with the interconnected nature of the film and you begin to see the film’s structure: that of a joke. I mean this in a good way, trust me. Every scene has a setup that leads to a “punchline” or payoff later down the line; if you see any object in the background that sort of sticks out? You can bet that it will be used. A shotgun on a mantelpiece? Bryan takes it. A wall-phone looming over Bryan’s head? It will ring. Almost everything in this movie is a great example of Chekhov’s Gun, and because of this, the pacing of the film’s first three quarters is pristine. Cregger knows exactly how long to leave Bryan with a certain problem before giving him the solution and, in turn, a new problem. Because of the quick-paced structure and the 94-minute runtime, the film feels very brief and thankfully does not drag or overstay its welcome.
While it nails its setup, there is one punchline which the film fails to execute well: the ending.
Unfortunately, the film’s last quarter left me somewhat soured on it with a stunning drop in quality. It seems like it was extracted from a much worse film and just sutured on to the end of this one. The jokes stop landing, the pacing goes out the window, and it isn’t even scary anymore. Everything is lit under the harsh fluorescence of a hospital wing, and due to this the CGI really begins to show its flaws, becoming more absurd than horrific. This was the only part of the film that I felt reached the “video game movie” level of quality, which is unfortunate because I could see this film being something really special if it just struck that landing near the end.
As it stands, my worries about an adaptation of Resident Evil were largely soothed, and I found myself largely enjoying the film and Cregger’s vision. The horror-comedy roots of the series were faithfully adapted and kept hitting hard almost all the way to the end. Overall, Cregger’s Resident Evil (2026) avoids most of the pitfalls of being a video game adaptation and finds itself on pretty strong footing for being one of the better horror movies of the year. I would recommend this movie to fans of the series as well as people who have never even heard of the series before. All in all, I give it a seven out of ten.
Samuel Dameron is a Junior at Columbia College studying History. He is a staff writer for Double Exposure and in his free time he enjoys climbing, pretentiousness, a good book, and lifting.