Zach Cregger Finally Made His Resident Evil Movie, and I Wasn't Ready
I watched Resident Evil last night at the BFI IMAX and I'm still thinking about it this sunny morning.
Here's some context first: I'm a big Zach Cregger guy. Weapons and Barbarian both did something for me that a lot of horror hasn't in years. So when I heard he was doing a franchise film, I'll be honest, my first reaction was confusion. You make Weapons, you get that kind of critical and financial win with something entirely your own, and then you go... do Resident Evil? Of all franchises? It felt like a weird move on paper. But the more I sat with it, the more it made sense as a kind of Trojan horse — get the IP, make it his anyway. That's basically what happened, and it worked way better than I expected.
I saw it in 70mm at one of my favorite venues, the BFI IMAX in Waterloo, 9pm screening, packed house on a weeknight in central London. That's already a good sign for a movie. There's something about a full room at that hour that tells you people actually wanted to be there. And the whole thing just took me back to being a kid watching movies for the first time — that feeling where you're not analyzing anything, you're just along for the ride.
For anyone who doesn't follow the franchise closely: this is the latest attempt to reboot Resident Evil on screen, and honestly, after a few misfires over the years, it's the first one that actually feels like it landed. The film follows a guy named Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, whose job is to transport an organ from one hospital to another. You already know how that's going to go. This is a horror movie. Things go sideways fast.
What I didn't expect was how much I'd end up loving Brian as a character. I'm not deep into Resident Evil lore — I've played some of the games, I own Resident Evil 4, but I'm not the guy hunting for Easter eggs or cross-referencing canon. I came into this purely as a Cregger fan and a horror fan looking for a good night at the cinema. And Brian is nothing like the stoic, gun-proficient heroes this franchise usually gives you. He's clumsy. He's not good with a weapon. He stumbles through the entire movie, and it's genuinely funny watching him do it.
The structure is basically video-game logic and I mean that as a compliment. Brian moves through a series of distinct environments on his way to a hospital in the center of Raccoon City — starts in a dark forest, ends up at a barn, keeps getting pulled or dragged into the next area like the movie's loading a new level. Every transition between sections plays almost like a cutscene. People are going to point out "well, it's based on a video game, of course it feels like one" — sure, but most video game adaptations don't pull this off with any kind of style. This one does.
Austin Abrams is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and I say that as someone who wasn't especially impressed by him in Weapons. In this, he steals the movie. His physical comedy, the way he reacts to the horror around him — half terrified, half genuinely amazed, like "okay this is disgusting but also kind of cool" — gives the film a texture I wasn't expecting. This is a guy working a late shift, dealing with relationship stuff, who suddenly gets thrown into a nightmare, and his reactions feel like an actual person's reactions rather than a horror-movie-hero's.
And that's maybe the thing I appreciated most: the movie doesn't sit in one emotional gear the whole time. It's under 90 minutes and it moves, but it's not a nonstop adrenaline sprint like Uncut Gems. You go from scared to anxious to disgusted to laughing, sometimes within the same scene. There's way more comedy in this than the trailers led me to believe, and it's tasteful comedy, not just tension-relief one-liners thrown in randomly. You can tell Cregger has a comedy background — he knows how to pace these shifts so the jokes land without deflating the horror around them.
Visually, it looks great. The cinematographer is Darrin Bragg... actually, Dariusz Wolski — same guy who shot Pirates of the Caribbean and Alien: Covenant — which is an interesting pairing for this kind of project, but it works. The signature Resident Evil red shows up throughout in a way that feels intentional rather than fan-service. The title card early on is a genuinely great moment.
The ending is going to be divisive. It's a bit unresolved, a bit abrupt, and I think some people are going to walk out annoyed by that. But I actually respect the choice. Cregger didn't try to be reverent to the source material. He didn't shoehorn in Leon, didn't go deep into established lore — he took the pieces that served his story and built something standalone inside the Resident Evil universe. That honestly feels like the smartest way to handle this. He's clearly not a die-hard fan of the games, and instead of pretending otherwise, he just used what worked for the story he wanted to tell.
I've seen some comments saying he should do Silent Hill next. I really hope he doesn't. Not because I don't think he could — I just want another original film from him. He proved something with this movie, that a director with a strong voice can go into a franchise and not lose himself in it, and I don't want that to turn into a pattern of franchise-hopping. Give us another Weapons. Give us something nobody's expecting.
If I'm being critical: some of the jokes repeat a bit too much, and there's a lot of running-and-shooting that starts to blend together by the midpoint. But somehow it still feels earned, maybe because the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. Not every horror film needs to be two and a half hours with dense lore and ten Easter eggs per scene. This one knows exactly how long it needs to be.
One small detail I really liked: the film has a sense of resourcefulness built into it. You always know what Bryan is carrying — how many bullets are in the gun, whether he's got a shotgun or nothing at all. No random weapon pulled out of nowhere to save the day. It's inventory-management logic, video-game logic again, and it keeps the tension grounded.
Overall — go see this one on the biggest screen you can find. I'm an IMAX person through and through, and I'm lucky enough to live somewhere I can just walk into the BFI and catch a 70mm screening on a whim. Resident Evil earns that kind of viewing. Box office numbers seem to be backing this up too — it looks like it's going to do really well, and honestly, good. Cregger took a gamble jumping from an original hit into a legacy franchise, and it paid off.
Slightly odd that it came out before Halloween instead of during the season, but it doesn't seem to have hurt it at all.
Not something I usually do full reviews of, but it felt worth writing up — this take on a Japanese IP fits reasonably well with what this channel's been covering lately anyway.
That's it from me. If you've read this far, thanks — go watch Resident Evil!!
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e!
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