Review: RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

 by Rob DiCristino

This film contains scenes of explicit violence and gore.

There’s this one hallway on the ground floor of the Raccoon City Police Department that has scared me to death ever since I first played Resident Evil 2 on the original PlayStation back in 1998. OGs will know it as the west wing corridor, the L-shaped passage just beyond the double doors in the main hall reception area. It’s in bad shape; at some point, the windows were haphazardly boarded up to protect the station from intruders — unsuccessfully, judging by the mangled bodies strewn about the floor — and there’s barely enough clearance for your character to squeeze through all the wreckage. That might not sound all that scary on its own, but I’ll never forget that moment when, as I tried to sneak quietly down that dark passage with only a few handgun rounds to my name, half a dozen hungry zombies suddenly smashed through those boarded windows. To this day, when I think about my love for Resident Evil, I don’t think about the cast of characters, the convoluted plots, or the nefarious Umbrella Corporation. I think about that first scare in that dank hallway.

Watching this week’s Resident Evil — the fourth live-action iteration of Capcom’s legendary survival horror franchise — I got the impression that co-writer/director Zach Cregger feels the same way that I do. Each Resident Evil adaptation has taken its own approach to the source material: Paul W. S. Anderson’s films ignored it almost entirely, borrowing a few character names but embracing an outlandish, action-heavy tone with Milla Jovovich’s canon foreigner Alice at the center. Netflix’s short-lived television series — starring the late, great Lance Reddick — tried to rejigger archvillain Albert Wesker into a sympathetic atoner attempting to right the wrongs of his past (It’s actually way more complicated than that, but I’m already bored talking about it). And then there’s Johannes Roberts’ Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a cheap, poorly constructed cinematic staph infection so slavishly loyal to the sights, sounds, characters, and situations of the first two games that I have absolutely no choice but to love it. I know it’s terrible, folks, but let me have my fun.

Cregger’s film, on the other hand, finds a near-perfect middle ground that replicates not the story beats or Easter eggs we know from Resident Evil, but the essential experience of playing one of the series’ best games alone in your room at night. Austin Abrams is Bryan, a medical courier who’s about to have the worst evening of his young life. Already six rounds deep into an argument with his newly pregnant girlfriend, Bryan is handed a priority-one package due for Raccoon City General Hospital, ground zero of the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Too broke — and, it should be said, too dumb — to resist the payday, Bryan sets out for the mountain community with the mystery parcel in hand. The situation goes to hell immediately, of course, and Bryan finds himself navigating a host of batshit circumstances — bloodthirsty zombies on a remote country road, mutant attack dogs in an abandoned farmhouse, contaminated rats in an underground sewer, and an ungodly abomination in a laboratory — that will be more than familiar to any self-respecting Resident Evil veteran.

And that’s all there is to it! No Chris Redfield. No Ada Wong. No unkillable, bazooka-toting chunguses or inscrutable merchants with bottomless pockets. No corporate espionage, no complicated art deco puzzles, and no inbred Aryan twins with boundary issues. Fresh off his Oscar-winning box office surprise, Weapons, Zach Cregger (and co-writer Shay Hatten) presents a taut and energetic thriller that might just change the whole playbook on IP franchise filmmaking. It would be a massive stretch to call Resident Evil a landmark in horror — its scares are effective but vanishingly few and far between — but there’s a grounded, elemental simplicity to his approach that is perfumed with the confidence of a newly-minted Visionary Filmmaker telling studio executives exactly where they can dispose of their notes. Every sequence in Resident Evil feels like a slice of gameplay between save points — not even the uber-disciplined Cregger can resist a nod to the famous typewriter rooms — a mad dash for ammo, resources, and a pathway through the hell of Armageddon.

So while Resident Evil may be painfully light on ideas and features computer-generated imagery consistent with the unfortunate budgetary practices of its European financiers — including Davis Films, the French co-producers of my beloved Silent Hill — there’s enough mean-spirited charm and gory invention in Cregger’s bare-bones third feature to render anything outside Bryan’s peripheral vision almost meaningless. Audiences tuned in to the series’ frequency will delight in watching him try and fail — mostly fail — to overcome obstacles small (a gate is secured by a stainless-steel padlock) and large (a rolling bundle of reanimated limbs is chasing him up an elevator shaft) alike. Cregger is sure to feel some pushback from a segment of the fan base who insist that their Deeply Silly and Ludicrously Melodramatic video game series be treated with more depth and gravity — a cameo from a familiar comedian/podcaster betrays Cregger’s disinterest in that approach — but for those of us who still remember that first midnight playthrough, Resident Evil will feel just like home.

Resident Evil hits U.S. theaters on Friday, September 18th.