New Release: Resident Evil
Spoiler alert...Resident Evil is actually a comedy.
You read that correctly. I mean, YES, it is a horror movie, but my only gripe is that it is almost too funny for a horror movie.
For those who aren't aware, Resident Evil was a Japanese horror video game that has spawned six movies starring Milla Jovovich, a separate 2021 movie, and a Netflix series, plus comic books, novels, blah blah blah.
I confess I'd never seen any of the "classics" starring Milla until the other day, when I decided to watch the 2002 flick. Boy, oh boy, was that something. It's truly amazing how far we've come in horror. Another confession...I've never really been a horror fan, due to movies put out in the past where so little thought is given to the story and all the focus goes into cheap jump scares and gore porn. That said, 2002's Resident Evil gets a 30ish% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason. Not even a bit of side nipple from Milla could help that film.
But I digress; 2026 brings us a reboot of this franchise with Barbarian & Weapons director Zach Cregger, who does have a really good handle on what it takes to make a good horror movie nowadays. I haven't read many interviews with Cregger about this movie, but I wouldn't be surprised to find he drew inspiration from 1986's The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum. I don't know much about how the video game plays out, but the parallels between this movie's ending and The Fly are striking.
Resident Evil, starring Austin Abrams (who also played a role in Cregger's Weapons), follows Bryan, a medical courier tasked with delivering a package to a hospital in Raccoon City. Along the way, he encounters some horrific obstacles. I don't want to spoil anything here, so we'll leave it at that.
What the movie does well: the first-person shooter video game POV is incredible. At times, you feel like you're watching one of those YouTube videos of someone else playing a video game. Bryan's character makes several jokes that he feels like he's in a video game, so it leans heavily into the game's origins and fully breaks from the older, cheesier versions of the franchise. Abrams is brilliant in this movie. He makes you feel the absurdity of the situation so well that it pulls you into the first-person POV gameplay, because he mutters things to himself that you, as a participant, would be exclaiming. Another plus for the movie: some of the jump scares are legit, and the gore is pretty effing nasty. (Listen, eventually I want to apply for critic certification, so I don't wanna be cussing all the time lol). And it is funnier than you'd expect, but...
What it gets wrong: at a certain point, the humor outweighs the horror to the point of distraction. It cuts the intensity of a scene, and I'm not sure that plays well for a horror movie if it's throughout the entire movie. Some of the humor is well worth it. Again, Abrams's reactions to what's happening to him are warranted and make you feel like you're playing along, but sometimes the audience might not welcome the humor and want to feel horrified. I read a snippet somewhere that Cregger said that after testing the film with audiences, he cut out a bunch of the humor, but I'm beginning to think he was trolling to sort of blindside you with the humor in those absurd settings. WHICH DOES WORK early on...I feel it starts to weigh the movie down as it goes on.
All in all, it's a much better film than the 2002 version, but that wouldn't have been too hard. I'm not sure the rewatchability will hold up because of the humor, but maybe it will make the rotation in my household come next October, when we do our horror-movie-a-day. I don't think I'll still be laughing the entire time. 3.5/5
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