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Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil capitalises on the violence, gore and all out horror of the beloved gaming franchises and hits the nail on the head with a mixture of both action, jump scares and easter eggs dedicated to hardcore fans. The tense excitement gives you butterflies in your stomach and an intense experience for both gaming and horror fans alike.
Bryan (Austin Abrams) a courier sticking to his duties to the very end provides an immaculate performance, providing an unbelievable everyman relatability with the many gruesome encounters he has throughout the film. His repetitive outbursts of blunders of frustration keeps the film a lot more grounded and entertaining.
Bryan carries out a final delivery after postponing the end of his shift, and takes to completing one last night time run to deliver an important package to none other than Racoon City (a fictional city that lovers of the game all know too well). The distance and urgency resulted in both double pay for Bryan, but little did he realise the extent of a formidable snowstorm. He soon accidently hits a woman on the thick iced-filled road as he is then drawn into the chaos that awaits him and a familar outbreak stemming from the Resident Evil game series.
Austin’s performance and Cregger’s vision for the character was certainly a winning formula as it presented a character with a good heart in knowing what is right and wrong. Instead of leaving the woman behind, he offered to bring her along to the hospital. Instead of attempting to evade a police officer, he rationlaised about what had transpired and focused on his task at hand. He even handles non-zombie outbreak issues, trying to hash out a crisis with his offscreen girlfriend (Sara Paxton) and his incompetency wielding numerous firearms in the face of an array of disturbing creatures.
The film appeals to audience members who are not entirely video game lovers due to the fact it feels like a guy who has dropped into a game but is still learning the controls and rules of survival. Zach Cregger includes an homage to the gaming series with replications of a first-person shooter POV as well as checking cabinets and draws in a deserted house. All throughout Abrams continues to humanize a character that has been run ragged, even if he has been placed in mortal danger, he still has enough time to complain about how wet his socks are.
As great as Abrams is in this role, the cameraman deserves credit for staying close and providing those closeups to capture the tension and emotional stability of the character throughout. Cregger’s vision for this film presents similarities to his previous work, Weapons (2025) and Barbarian (2022). With his commandment of pacing, timing, inventiveness, and most importantly jump scares.
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is a welcome addition to the horror genre and to a franchise that has found it hard to get off the ground when it comes to cinema. The creative form of monstrosities that is seen throughout the film is fantastic compared to it’s predecessors as to where they solely focused on the zombie action. The film remains closer to the source material with the game’s spirit. One flaw that Cregger did not address was the real journey of what Bryan was really completing, but does enough across 90 mins of the film to make us care for him. Without any corniness from the games, Zach Cregger does an impeccable job to give appreciation for a gaming franchise that needed more inspiration in cinema.