Resident Evil

Resident Evil, the reimagining of the videogame franchise that launched thirty years ago on the first Sony PlayStation console, is a 2026 film written, directed, and produced by Zach Cregger, the same filmmaker behind recent breakthrough horror films such as Weapons (2025) and Barbarian (2022). This new film presents us with a parallel side-story that follows a freelance medical courier, Bryan, as he attempts to safely transport an urgent delivery into the heart of Raccoon City.

What I am most surprised by in my iMax matinee screening of this film on a very hot, late-summer, afternoon on opening day was how dark, cold, and believably suspenseful the first twenty minutes of the cinematography is as it follows Bryan, often in third-person-view and over-the-shoulder, as he navigates the slippery encounters that lead to his new delivery quest. This repeated camera-work and twitchy choreography mirrors the mechanical experiences of spasmodically controlling the character’s movement, a unique experience borrowed from the era of early three-dimensional action-adventure games. This adaptation of late-nineties videogame cinematics makes this particular adaptation feel more faithful to the dreadful terror and psychological horror of the original source material, more than any of the previous dozen or so live-action or animated films, in my opinion.

Anxiously waiting for the next horrifying moment of biological mutation and bodily gore to reveal itself around every corner, I also quickly related to the main character’s stress, portrayed by the actor Austin Abrams (who also co-starred in Weapons), as his frazzled composure, situational frustration, and jumpy awkwardness develops into denial and remorse while the trauma from his survival tactics, or lack-thereof, tests Bryan’s abilities to move forward in his journey.

Unfortunately, I am afraid that this fresh vision of such a wildly viral and beloved franchise will likely get an abundance of low reviews for its lack of fan-service and lack of specific references to the characters or events of the previous iterations of this story. However, this is more of a criticism of toxic fan culture than it is of the film itself.

With that said, I find the lack of fan service refreshing for this genre of films adapted from games. I think this film is one of the most beautifully shot and thoughtfully edited versions of the world of Resident Evil that shows viewers more than it explains. More than a few of the graphic moments not only referred to (but did not copy) key creatures from the previous games, but such grotesque abominations reminded me of refined visualizations of memorable special effects from such key horror film precedents as The Thing (1984) and Evil Dead (1981).

By the end of the film, I caught myself reflecting not just on the lack of biopunk sci-fi-horror with plots about the dangers of unregulated privatization of scientific or technological advancements in the mainstream media, but I became totally immersed in thinking about how I would personally react to suddenly being thrown into a very plausible apocalyptic doomsday scenario as a result of corporate negligence. Small realistic moments like struggling to load a clip, un-athletically jumping a fence, or safely handling a firearm were some of the biggest surreal character decisions that push this film beyond the threshold of science fiction plot exposition into pure suspension of disbelief. Cregger’s vision of Resident Evil is the more atmospheric, smart, and abstractly advanced version of the film I wish we could have gotten twenty years ago from George A. Romero. What a way to celebrate thirty years of “RESIDENT EEEVILLL!”