Intensity 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Zach Cregger.
As a horror fan who’s never embraced video games, or more specifically horror video games, I can honestly say I never really caught the bug. While I always pined to play the video game Borneo: A Jungle Nightmare 3D horror adventure game predicated on Cannibal Holocaust, I never got around to it. Even though the game’s script was written by Ruggero Deodato I just never made the time for this time-suck.
Depending on who’s counting there have been over 45 horror movies directly adapted from video games. My guess, and this is only a guess, I’ve seen a number of these and probably never realized what I was watching.
Color me surprised when I reluctantly wandered into the 14th Resident Evil film and had my soggy socks completely blown off. And, yes, there really are eight live action films, four CGI films, and a pretty fascinating documentary about THE George Romero’s attempt to tackle this lore.
The most recent entry into the fold is not only the best Resident Evil film made, it’s also one of the most pop-corn-chomping film that’s hit the screens in years. This is a five out of five with no notes. Well maybe one or two notes.
The films all tie to a rather simple conceit involving a malevolent corporation, the Umbrella Corporation, who unwittingly unleash a series of viral outbreaks that trigger a global zombie apocalypse. The remaining survivors of Raccoon City are then required to duke it out with hordes of the undead and bio-engineered monsters.
Many of the films have taken this construct and made it hyper convoluted Christmas Tree of concepts with way too many ornaments. Resident Evil 2026 eschews the complexity and instead opts for a simple hero’s journey involving a medical delivery driver, Bryan.
The perfectly cast and perfectly acted performance of Bryan comes courtesy of Austin Abrams (Walking Dead and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark). Director Zach Cregger takes the character and completely subverts the guns-a-blazing performance by Milla Jovovich, as Alice, in the original 2002 film. So frustrated with being placed in the position of the hero, Bryan loudly proclaims “I suck at guns.”
Bryan is presented with a too-good-to-be true opportunity to deliver a medical package to Raccoon City in the middle of a winter storm. From the moment that he weirdly encounters a shoeless women on the road, to the ascent of the hospital at the end of the film, it’s clear Byran is not cut out for the work of a hero.
As the near-perfect protagonist, Bryan wanders from self-assured “Ok, ok, ok, you got this. You can do it” to “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, what is happening?!?!” It’s this well-timed and well-played juxtaposition that makes this character so likable and relatable. Cregger plies pitch perfect comedic timing and pregnant pauses that are punctuated with delicious look right-look left jumps scares.
Bryan never dons a skin-tight jumpsuit, karate chops, or a limitless arsenal. He’s plopped into a snowy wonderland where he has to figure out what’s happening and more importantly how to take the safety off of a gun. In this case, the hero’s journey (or monomyth if you’re a fan of Joseph Campbell), is a pitch perfect storytelling device where Bryan is forced to leaves the comfortable confines of his deliver car, tackle some of the wildest challenges in an unfamiliar world, and become transformed.
To say Bryan is transformed is the understatement of 2026.
Should you see Resident Evil?
This is the best horror film of 2026. There I said it. Everything about this film — save for a couple snowy scenes where you don’t see the character’s steamy breath and a scene where a car drives through the snow and doesn’t appear to leave tire tracks — is a horror fan’s dream.
Now that Zach Cregger is a solid three for three as a horror director, and also happens to have an academy award attached to his name, it’s safe to say that he’s the future of horror. While the golden age of horror began several year ago with newly minted director Ari Aster, Cregger brings a broader and more accessible version of horror to the screen. No shade on Ari Aster, but Cregger’s improv talents bring a raucous and joyous element that’s been missing from years of trauma-based horror.
As Scariest Things Podcast writer Robert Zilbauer proclaimed in 2022 when looking back at 20 years of Resident Evil “You’re a continuity purist’s worst nightmare, thoroughly hated by critics, and sometimes you just don’t make a lot of sense….As long as you keep giving us over-the-top action sequences and ridiculously epic story lines we’ll keep coming back for more.”
Truer words have never been spoken about Resident Evil.
Resident Evil is in theaters everywhere.