RESIDENT EVIL: Game recognises game…
Bryan is a courier who didn’t sign up for this.
He simply wants to deliver his packages and go home. He wants to apologise to his girlfriend for his clumsy reaction to her news. He would really like it to stop snowing, for the strange lady to stop pawing at his face and for the nice policeman to let him go on his way. He’d really appreciate not being chased by an angry d/evolving dog that has some very unusual attack capabilities.
But right now, Bryan would very much like to just survive the night and given that monsters seem to be appearing everywhere and trying to kill him, that’s definitely not a given.
Can Bryan reach Raccoon City’s hospital in time to deliver his important cargo… and save himself and maybe the world?
Game on.
*some spoilers*
Most horror films – and for that matter genre games – are somewhat interchangeable. There’s only so many ways you can execute a jump-scare, only so many designs for your boogeyman or monster that don’t look like you’ve simply copied another, only so many combination of buttons to click and directions to go. Even creative evisceration has its limits. That means that during any amount of running time, there’s an extended suspension of disbelief needed. If the film/game isn’t that rare classic outing that makes you think deeply about its subject-matter and the cultural sociological ramifications, well, then it at least has to pass the time in a kinetic, attention-grabbing and bloody way.
Even in an age of solid game-to-screen adaptations, it was tempting to dismiss the new Resident Evil movie, believing that it would be more derivative fluff. The games have continued to be popular but the irregular Resident Evil film franchise, headlined by Milla Jovovich for the last decade or two, certainly didn’t seem to be digging up any new undead mutations in recent years. They had become little more than time-killing, monster-killing templates of each other.
But, unexpectedly, there’s something genuinely fun and almost meta-immersive about the new entry, a release that makes no real attempt to provide connective tissue to what’s gone before in the film franchise, except in the obligatory name-checking of things like ‘Raccoon City’ and the ‘Umbrella Corporation’ established in the game’s thirty years of mythology. Under writer/director Zach Cregger’s watch the new film celebrates not only the intensely dangerous mission at hand but also the sheer absurd nature of that quest and threat.
Cregger, of course, has form. 2022’s Barbarian got him a lot of attention and last year’s Weapons also tapped in to both a truly horrific scenario and a vein of weird, dark humour – a double-whammy that ended up nabbing an Oscar. He’s exactly the right guy to at least bring a new approach to what amounts to both a reboot and a love-letter to the whole gaming experience.
It’s not quite Scream territory (where the cast know the ‘rules’ they’re facing or that they’re ‘in’ a slasher outing) so much as having a central character that simply acts in a way that represents the audience rather than the whims of a formula. Bryan is not a gymnastic, highly-trained heroic figure like the game’s Leon S. Kennedy, Jill Valentine or the Redfields… he’s a recognisable, aimless everyman character – a hapless delivery guy feeling the pressures and siren-call of responsibility – who reacts in completely reasonable ways to unreasonable situations.
Bryan is played by Austin Abrams (who slimmed down and apparently passed on the role of The Sentry in Thunderbolts* to play James the junkie in Weapons) and he carries much of the film through ever-widening eyes. It becomes entirely possible to predict and cheer Bryan’s reactions because they’re so close to what you’d likely do and feel in a similar moment and what gamers mutter under their breath as they face a new level or insanely powerful opponent. Bryan sensibly tries to fully co-operate with a cop that pulls him over. He shoots at things and… misses. “Really????” he shouts when he encounters yet another padlocked door blocking his path. “Yeah, screw that!” he sensibly decides when he’s charged with retrieving a key on a moving corpse that may or may not still be ‘alive’… acknowledging that risk would be really, really stupid. How can you not root for him?
Anyone who loves the vibe of the Evil Dead movies will revel in Resident Evil. This 2026 entry works because, as in his previous work, writer/director Zach Cregger knows all the expectations of the genre and then spins the wheel on celebrating or subverting them in turn. He’s not reinventing that wheel, or trying to, he’s just acknowledging the tread and tyre-marks exist and making them work in his favour. He gets you invested in the chaos and on Bryan’s mission.
Yes, you’ll also recognise some of the set-pieces from other productions. Hitting a lone pedestrian on a backwater snowy trail, foreshadowing the chaos to come, has been seen in plenty of films (most recently in Passenger just a few short months ago) and encountering a multi-limbed monstrosity in a hospital basement is also a key part of The Last of US: Part 2‘s gameplay (will we see that in the third season of the HBO adaptation next year?). A scene where a dog suddenly shows off its genetic mutation (and Bryan’s incredulous reaction) is reminiscent of a similar scene in The Thing. Yet most of these scenes work because they’re not outright theft, they’re genre punctuation in a homage to the very act of game-play.
The brisk running time – just a little over an hour and a half – also works in the film’s favour, keeping things moving in the way a console game pulls you in. The VFX aren’t ground-breaking but they are executed well, ranging from blood-splattered grand guignol to basic ‘it’s behind you!’ Bryan doesn’t get many moments to rest and when he does, he starts to lament a series of choices that brought him here, humanising him further.
Like some, I appreciate the reasoning for the choice of how the film ends, but would have preferred a different one. However, a sequel remains possible and I’d be happy to revisit this residential territory if Cregger decided to turn on the blender and mix up some more monster mayhem.
9/10
Playstation Films’ Resident Evil is now on general release from Sony Pictures Releasing…