After Weapons, Zach Cregger could have done almost anything he wanted.
Weapons was one of 2025’s surprise hits, even scooping an Oscar for Amy Madigan (my beloved) in the process. And director Zach Cregger, I can only assume, had his pick of projects following its success, and the one he chose was not one I would have predicted – Resident Evil.
The Resident Evil franchise is a pretty towering one in the grand scheme of horror media – nine games, more than a dozen films, and some legendary villains, moments, and characters that have become almost synonymous with the survival horror genre. But the films, despite their great number, had failed to deliver an unequivocally good adaptation of the games – sure, they might be good for a little fun, camp action nonsense, but real quality? That was harder to come by. Enter Cregger, whose horror chops seemed to promise the franchise’s first really great movie – a story set on the night of the Raccoon City outbreak, following a medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) as he traverses the chaos and attempts to drop off part of a cure at the hospital. Not before getting chomped, of course.
But the question is – did Cregger deliver? Now, I’m little more than a passing fan of the Resident Evil games, but, after the flop of the century that was Return to Silent Hill, I was hoping for something a little better for my fellow 90s survival horror game adaptation fans. And, overall, I think that Cregger did manage to deliver on something pretty damn impressive – even if that does come with a few caveats.
Cregger doesn’t let the occasion get to him, which is no small feat, given that he’s stepping into a thirty-year-old franchise with a serious weight in the world of horror gaming (and, hell, cinema, for that matter, even if that weight is far less positive). He brings his distinctive tonal style to the story – he’s a director who’s aware that a scare and a joke are bout three inches apart in terms of cinematic language, and he approaches Resident Evil with that in mind, never letting things get too serious nor too bogged down in the need to lampshade the story’s gaming origins. There are a few nods to the gameplay here and there – a first-person shot, weapon upgrades – but, for the most part, he seems more interested in turning this story into something truly built for cinema.
And I think, for the most part, he pulls that off. Abrams is shouldering the vast majority of the movie here, and he does an exceptionally solid job keeping Bryan from feeling too much like a player stand-in. He’s got a really warmth and charm to him that comes off him in waves in this movie, and the rare moments of emotional weight are handled without breaking the momentum of the film. It’s an urban odyssey at its heart, taking us through Raccoon City as the outbreak takes hold, and Cregger brings his various settings to life with immense skill – the first act, as Bryan tries to escape a farmhouse, feels like something out of Fargo through the lens of George A. Romero, while the sequences in the city itself have a kind of Escape-from-New-York quality. The creatures themselves are brilliantly conceived and created, with production leaning mostly on real effects to bring them to life; they’re nasty and gross and consistently surprising, which is about the best compliment I could give a movie like this in a franchise as expansive as Resident Evil.
Where the film lost me a little was in the foot-dragging third act – as Bryan’s condition worsens, the script seems to slow to a frustrating degree, eliminating the urgency that the movie has done so well maintaining till that point. I mean, I understand that this man has had One Hell of a Day, but I’m just saying that taking time to gloat when you’re well-aware that your veins are turning black feels…a little stupid, to be frank. The closing moments of the film are decidedly abrupt, but more than that, the ultimate creature that Bryan becomes doesn’t stand up to the other monsters we’ve seen so far, at least to me. The film builds the stakes, momentum, and monsters up so well in the first hour or so, and then sort of plateaus and never tops itself in its final act, which left me feeling a little deflated by the time the credits rolled.
But still – I think it’s fair to say that Zach Cregger, even if its not going to win him any Oscars this time around has created an undeniably great entry into the Resident Evil film canon. I’d love to hear what you made of it, particularly if you’re a fan of the franchise, so don’t hesitate to jump into the comments and let me know what you thought – and where it stands in the Resident Evil movies so far.
If you enjoyed this article and want to see more stuff like it, please consider supporting us on Ko-Fi. You can check out more of my work on my personal blog, The Cutprice Guignol!
By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Dread Central)
