Resident Evil (2026)

I am a major fan of Zach Cregger's other films (Barbarian especially, but Weapons as well). I am also a pretty darn big fan of the video game series. So know this bias and the expectations that come with that knowledge.

Well, this is a fine film. Good length, good pacing, good acting and a great score. It captured the essence of the video game series while telling it's own original story; there's no Jill or Leon or Wesker or any other characters from the game. None of the video games plot lines are retold here. This is a straightforward, slightly silly but still scary zombie movie in Racoon City and it played that out pretty perfectly.

There's an abundance of comedy, mostly dark. And the main character's squeaks and reactions are great despite wearing a bit thin on this relatively straightforward path. And the horror is mostly body horror, with some of it brutally sad. There's limited sense of dread or fear and there's a fair few jump scares, with one being quite good. But the other moments of terror or jumpscares felt like a limited substitute for real feelings of terror that the video games instilled (or even other horror movies from his own catalog or otherwise).

I recommend giving this one a go if you like horror and/or the video game series. This is a vibe-accurate Resident Evil with consistent nods to the series (see: locked pathways), but it's very much unlike the RE films already made. And it not being a replication of the games is a-okay.

Side note: I went to watch this on Thursday, 9/17. However, 10 minutes into the start of the movie a pair of guys sat down next to me and their B.O. was so powerful, so rancid, so literally nauseating that I had to leave the theater. In terms of powerscales, there have been homeless folks on busses sitting right next to me and smelling rather ripe, yet they only have a fraction of the body odor power these assumedly gamer guys brought into the auditorium. It was unfathomable and I had to wonder if it was a PR stunt where they may have been actual zombies with decaying flesh because I've never smelled body odor so bad it felt like it was literally burning my nostrils and seemingly permeating into my brain. Perhaps a medical condition, but I doubt it because there wasn't the faintest hit of a non-B.O. smell to mask the monstrous odor. So please gamers, keep good hygiene and give us a good reputation out there (also see: don't do death threats because it is a unique storyline vs. a strict video game adaptation).

¶