Let’s face it: Resident Evil has had a long, arduous journey on the big screen. Unlike its source material, widely regarded as one of gaming’s most celebrated franchises, the film adaptations have often been criticised for straying too far from the series’ survival-horror roots. Over three decades on, Zach Cregger’s entry arrives with a chance to finally do things differently.
Cregger makes several smart choices, most notably by scaling things down and keeping the terror intimate. Visually, Resident Evil pays homage to the games with familiar over-the-shoulder and first-person shots, pulling audiences closer to the action. Other nods land neatly too, from the frantic management of dwindling ammo and an increasingly bombastic arsenal to those maddening padlocks that, for whatever reason, refuse to open.
Cregger is at his best when he lets the horror take over. A wave of rats pouring through the sewers, a biohazard monstrosity of tangled limbs lunging at Bryan (Austin Adams) — these are the images that hit hardest and linger longest. That only makes the comedy feel more jarring when it cuts through the tension, leaving some of the film’s strongest scares fighting against their own punchlines.
That tonal imbalance chips away at the film’s dramatic and emotional stakes. Scenes often seem ready to settle into something more grounded or affecting, only for a joke to barge in and puncture the tension. It’s frustrating because there is clearly room for stronger character moments; the film simply refuses to sit with them long enough to let them land. Resident Evil has always had a taste for camp, and that absurd streak is part of its appeal. But Cregger’s version does not always fuse that camp with dread as deftly as its source material, leaving parts of the movie feeling less playfully unhinged than awkwardly out of sync.
Still, even with those stumbles, Cregger’s Resident Evil feels like one of the more promising attempts to bring the series’ survival horror to the big screen. It understands, more often than not, the claustrophobic dread, grisly spectacle and pulpy absurdity that have kept the games alive for so long. If only its comedy and character work had been handled with the same confidence as its scares, this could have been the definitive Resident Evil movie fans have been waiting for. As it stands, it is a flawed but compelling step in the right direction.
