Director: Zach Cregger
Cast: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser
Screenplay: Zach Cregger, Shay Hatten
90 mins. Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout.

Video game films are at an impasse. We’re so rarely able to capture the secret sauce that makes a successful video game adaptation. Oftentimes, there’s two sides pulling in opposite directions, one of them attempting to make the most faithful adaptation of the characters and story, if any, while the other tries to emulate the feeling of actually playing the game, which seems nearly impossible to maintain for 90-plus minutes. Throw that all out now, as writer/director Zach Cregger (Weapons) has crafted a movie that fires like a bullet for one of the most intense movie experiences of this or any year. His Resident Evil is not only the best film based on the property (not the highest of bars), but it’s easily the greatest video game movie ever made.

Bryan (Austin Abrams, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) works as a medical courier, delivering important medical supplies and organs to various hospitals. His night is at an end when he’s offered double pay to being a cooler to Raccoon City General Hospital. While navigating the icy roads, he slams into a woman who crosses his path, and that’s only the first shocking turn of his very long night as he journeys into the heart of Raccoon City, fighting for his life against an infection that mutates anyone who comes across it and makes the dead rise once again.

Resident Evil is light on story and characters (though neither is nonexistent), but it functions like Mad Max: Fury Road as an experiential odyssey from Point A to Point B. Simply enough, Bryan has to get to Raccoon City General, and Cregger has offered up set piece after set piece and obstacle after obstacle to stop him. It’s the hero’s journey, boiled down to its essence, and it’s not reinventing the wheel, but Cregger has chosen not to overcomplicate anything with his approach, a novel idea that works wonders in the incredibly creative world of Resident Evil. This approach allows him to infuse elements of the decades-long game franchise into his film without making a general audience member feel like they’re missing out. Fans will spot the typewriter and laugh at the frustratingly difficult padlocks, but Resident Evil never feels like “inside baseball” for someone who’s never played the games or watched any of the other films.

Fans decried this simplified approach when the first teasers hit, and they learned that their favorite characters will likely not be appearing but make no mistake: this is still Resident Evil. The monsters are gross and splattery, the mutations are shocking and unexpected, and this is the movie that most emulated the feeling of playing a Resident Evil game. For starters, Cregger wants us to count the bullets, look at the exits, and know our character’s inventory, and those details were constantly running through my mind. There are weapon upgrades as the story progresses, and our main characters learns and adapts to what he knows. It’s even directed like a Resident Evil cut scene, with pans and zooms that feel right out of the games, and a few moments of actual First-Person Shooter viewpoint (though not often enough to feel like a gimmick). Cregger lingers on the terror of the unknown in the darkness in a way that activated my stress just like it would in the games.

This is further explored with the main character of Bryan, played excellently by Austin Abrams. Abrams, who is no stranger to fighting the undead (he had a short stint on AMC’s The Walking Dead about a decade ago), plays Bryan as ineffective, distant, none too smart, but he’s able to learn from the experiences of the night all the same and have more than a few VIDEO GAME moments. Just like any player holding a controller in their basement (this writer included), Bryan is scared, and he also really sucks at this game. He misses often, he makes mistakes, and he’s always muttering under his breath. He is us.

Zach Cregger’s previous two films, Barbarian and Weapons, are both great, but I also saw a lot of similarities in both films, in how they utilized multiple perspectives and in their central antagonists. Resident Evil represents a new challenge in that Bryan is pretty much the only character onscreen for much of the film. There are, of course, other credited actors, but most of them are not in the forefront for most of the run time. The scares and tension are still there, though, with him cleverly presenting us with threat A and threat B, both that we know about, and then throwing the unexpected threat C right into Bryan’s path and upending any plan he might’ve had. Cregger’s comedy is still there, and it still lulls out that false sense of security, and then he hits Bryan again. The comedy/horror dance performed here is excellent and nearly had me choking on my beverage at one point.

Outside of a slightly underwhelming ending, Resident Evil is better than I could ever have imagined. I cannot wait to see it again with a packed theater. I can’t wait to show this movie to my wife. Cregger’s skill is that it’s just as much fun to introduce his films to new viewers as it is to actually see it for the first time, and Resident Evil is no exception. This is, purely from an experiential perspective, the most thrilling and tense movie of the year, a perfect encapsulation of playing the actual game with a lead character who kind of sucks at everything, which is how most playthroughs feel. It’s the best Resident Evil movie. It’s the best video game movie ever made. I said what I said. Please…sequel when?

4½/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For more Resident Evil: Resident Evil (2002), Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction
• For more Zach Cregger: Weapons