GENRE | Zach Cregger and Austin Abrams Chase 'Resident Evil'

"I've only used guns in video games!"

Sony Pictures / Constantin Film

Sketch comedian-turned-genre auteur Zach Cregger inventively relaunches the survival horror franchise based on the popular, now thirty-year-old Capcom video game series Resident Evil—disconnected from the long-running Milla Jovovich-starring six-film series or the ill-received 2021 Welcome to Raccoon City reboot. His highly original adaptation uses the familiar world to tell a straightforward but new mission set over a few hours in a single night, when a biohazardous infection spread by the Umbrella Corporation turns people into mutant zombies.

Starring Austin Abrams as basically the only real character, his medical courier (also a bad boyfriend) must deliver a life-saving item to another hospital in Raccoon City. After a series of hilariously horrific incidents force him to improvise off course, he must explore and find his way out of trouble, like in an interactive video game environment. Scripted by Cregger and Shay Hatten, the novel way the film employs familiar beats, like finding weapons, entering buildings, point-of-view action, and just generally completing a mission, is translated to the screen sublimely and in a tight ninety-five minutes with little to no fat.

Resident Evil draws on our collective familiarity with video game action, third-person active shooters, and interactive open-world environments. Abrams' relentlessly effective physical comedy makes his sad sack everyman character comically identifiable yet always relatable. Cregger again proves his penchant and talent for mixing horror genre storytelling with an emotional but lean A-to-B narrative, grounding it in increasingly gory set pieces that are as gross as they are thrillingly tense yet absurdly humorous.


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