Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
When it comes to the Resident Evil movies, calling this latest entry the best in the series is only noteworthy if you remember how low the previous movies set the bar. It’s a definite step up, but that doesn’t really say much. Director Zach Cregger’s take on the legendary horror video game series brings stronger filmmaking and a tighter story, with great atmosphere and truly inspired creature work. But it constantly breaks its own tension for easy laughs, making it occasionally fun and perfectly watchable, but also pretty forgettable once the credits roll.
Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier making an urgent late-night delivery to a hospital in the doomed Raccoon City. The snow alone would make the drive tough, not to mention the infected people and all sorts of mutated abominations lurking along the way. Pretty quickly, finishing the job becomes a fight for survival in a place where normal rules no longer apply. Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten give Bryan a clear goal and mostly avoid getting bogged down in series lore. It’s a classic horror setup: an ordinary guy, a simple task, and a night that keeps getting worse.
Making Bryan completely unprepared for the nightmare he finds himself in has real advantages. He’s not a trained soldier, and his confusion makes it easy for viewers to relate to the chaos around him. Abrams is serviceable in the role, especially when he shows the fear of a guy who’s completely out of his depth. At times, his panic makes the danger feel even more real. But his performance largely feels improvised, with lots of screaming, muttering to himself, and dropping an F-bomb every other word. What starts as a believable reaction soon becomes a fairly limited bag of responses.
His constant screaming and shrieking get old fast. Creggar keeps turning Bryan’s panic into a gag, holding on to his wide-eyed shock or using his desperate reactions for laughs. Humor can work in horror, especially when it comes naturally from how people behave under pressure. But here, the movie tries so hard to make Bryan funny and relatable that it robs his situation of actual danger. Instead of pulling viewers further into his predicament, his running commentary keeps poking viewers in the ribs to remind them that they’re supposed to be having a good time. After a while, the effort is more noticeable than the laughs.
Nothing illustrates that problem better than the running gag with locked entrances. Bryan keeps running into gates, doors, and other entrances that he can’t open, and the movie keeps repeating this struggle as though repetition will somehow make it funnier. It doesn’t, and it goes on far too long. What could’ve been a quick, winking nod to the games just becomes another delay in a movie that’s supposed to feel urgent. Each new obstacle adds less suspense about what might catch him and more impatience about how long we’ll spend watching him struggle.
Relying so much on comedy is the movie’s biggest flaw, because Cregger clearly knows how to create some really disturbing images. Snow, darkness, and small pools of streetlight make the opening scenes eerily chilling. By keeping the camera right over Bryan’s shoulder, we can’t see much, so the shadows and darkness do the terrifying work. The mutated creatures are inventively gruesome, especially when recognizable bodies twist into shapes seemingly assembled by someone with a grudge against basic anatomy. The scenes featuring these creatures hint at a stronger, scarier movie. But just as the dread starts to build, another forced comedic beat lands, and the movie has to start building suspense all over again.
The script’s structure also becomes familiar well before the night wraps up. Bryan enters a dangerous place, meets something awful, and scrambles to the next location. The threats grow bigger and more elaborate, but there’s never any real emotional investment. A personal subplot gives Bryan something to care about besides the delivery, but it’s too thin to carry any real weight or heart. By the end, the film keeps piling on wilder mayhem when what it really needs is a strong emotional payoff. It’s another promising movie, after Barbarian and Weapons, that Cregger has cooked up that ultimately feels half-baked: a good idea with promising pieces that never quite comes together.
Resident Evil has plenty of visual craft and grotesque creature fun to pass the time, and its simple approach is a welcome change of pace for the franchise. But leaning so hard on goofy jokes costs it the sustained dread that could have made it more memorable. In the end, it’s an okay creature feature whose best moments fade surprisingly fast. After spending so much time dealing with all those locked entrances, it’s too bad the movie never really finds the right key.
Resident Evil is currently playing in wide release.