Few movies can truly say they hit the ground running, but Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is among them. And that’s a good thing, because after so many Resident Evil movies, every new one needs a running start to have a chance of making it.
We can’t talk about a Resident Evil movie without doing a little bit of table-setting first, though. Resident Evil debuted on PlayStation in 1996 and coined the name for an emerging game genre: Survival Horror. Since then, Paul W.S. Anderson has directed six live-action Resident Evil movies starring his photogenic and acrobatic wife Milla Jovovich. 2021 brought us the Robbie Amell-led Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. That’s not counting the half-dozen CGI Resident Evil movies that more or less act as canonical extensions of the game series. Generally speaking, the Resident Evil movies have been on a downward trend since early into Anderson’s tenure. Now, in 2026, the unkillable movie franchise rises again, this time with Zach Cregger, director of Barbarian and Weapons, acting as the head of the monster.
Resident Evil follows medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) as he drops off a package and argues with his girlfriend over the phone. Instead of going home to talk to her about it, though, Bryan jumps at the chance to take a high-priority delivery to Raccoon City. It needs to get there intact, and without any detours. A perfect way to not talk about any personal problems Bryan might have. Bryan starts questioning his decision when he hits a woman in a nightgown while driving in the dark down a slick road in heavy snow.
That moment marks the point in which Bryan is in over his head and finds himself in a race to survive.
Bryan is not a hero. He is perhaps the least heroic character to lead a Resident Evil movie. And that’s a huge factor in why this disgusting, hilarious, and often frightening movie works. Bryan doesn’t have special forces training, and like so many of us, he’s only ever wielded a gun using a video game controller.
As he curses and fumbles his way through this horrifying night, he’s easy to sympathize with. He’s a sort of self-insert character for the audience, but not in the usual way we think of. What if you sat down to play Resident Evil for the first time but woke up in that world? The vast majority of us would be stuck in a stumbling run, trying to load the last rounds we have with shaking hands. That’s Bryan–always breathless and on the edge of a panic attack.
But Bryan never stops, and the movie doesn’t, either. Resident Evil runs at a breakneck pace through the film’s entire 95-minute runtime. There are no quiet moments to breathe and reflect: It’s a horrible night where one disaster pushes Bryan into the next one. Each time he’s found something resembling safety, he’s yanked right back into the endless nightmare. It’s a marathon movie in the vein of movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Run Lola Run.
As such, Resident Evil is more of a tense movie than a scary one. There are a handful of great jump scares, of course, and tons of viscera just everywhere. It’s also a very funny movie. Cregger cut his teeth on the sketch comedy show Whitest Kids U Know (he’s in good company with Jordan Peele and Curry Barker as sketch comedy alums making some of the best horror flicks around), and he’s said in interviews that he had to cut tons of jokes. Our protagonist copes with his nightmarish surroundings with humor. The jokes land, but they don’t destroy the tension and terror by any means. In fact, some of the best laughs come when we know something very bad is about to happen, and I still found myself backing into my seat when the bad thing came to pass.
Resident Evil fans will find plenty to enjoy here. There are no cameos from any Raccoon Police Department officers or members of STARS, but there are references all over the place. These are things that the average moviegoer might notice, but that only fans will understand. And even the monsters feel like they were created by and for Resident Evil fans.
There aren’t actually that many zombies in this movie, though they certainly do help propel it along. Instead of relying on classic Resident Evil monsters, Cregger treats us to mostly original monsters, but ones that feel like they’re in the lineage of the T-Virus. Masses of arms and legs, tentacles that end in teeth, you name it. I felt right at home watching the movie, but it still surprised me with awesome, gnarly, and nauseating monsters around every corner.
By backing away from the stories and characters of the video games, Cregger dodges the giant bullet of “that’s not my Leon Kennedy” and instead lets us finally experience Resident Evil ourselves, through our own eyes. The artifice of a campy action movie is gone, and we’re left with a terrified guy who runs from one set of problems, only to encounter something far worse.
