Resident Evil (2026) Review: Zach Cregger's Is a Lean, Mean Gore Machine
This is definitely one of the funnest video game movies in a long time.
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After coming out of the gate with two original features – 2022's Barbarian and 2025's Weapons – director Zach Cregger enters the franchise/IP landscape with a new take on Resident Evil. The long-running video game series has been the subject of seven movies over its lifetime, predominately starring actress Milla Jovovich and vastly ranging in quality. Cregger's take on the material is in the same landscape as his previous features, blending his awkward humor with a heavy amount of disgusting effects work.
But the script, co-written by him and Shay Hatten leans into the limitations of a video game movie, presenting a quick-paced and lean examination of fate and fatherhood that is as fun as can be. Anchored by a fantastic performance from Cregger alum Austin Abrams, what could have been a chintzy cash-grab ends up being a scary, breathless, and downright hilarious good time.
Bryan (Abrams) is having a very bad day. His girlfriend has just revealed that she's pregnant and he's coming down off a long shift of being a medical courier. But when he's offered double pay to deliver a medical package to Raccoon City General Hospital, he takes it. But upon entering the snowy city he hits a woman, whose contorted body and semi-consciousness is a bit odd. Thus kicks off a wild night of zombies and mayhem that sees Bryan forced to deliver the package to the hospital in the hopes of saving humanity.
Resident Evil is an interesting cinematic experiment in that it's effectively a one-man show. Abrams's Bryan arrives on the screen as an average Joe making his last delivery and hoping to return home to his girlfriend, Michelle, to continue having a conversation he clearly doesn't want to have (or know how to have). From the minute he's offered the ability to make double pay by delivering a Class A package to Raccoon City the race is on. To avoid the conversation. To make some quick cash. To keep the audience on the edge of their seats for the next 95 minutes. To make you absolutely adore Austin Abrams by the end.
Cregger and Hatton's script take the mentality of a video game and translate it to the screen. The character has an overall quest he must achieve. Along the way he reaches various locations (levels) he must defeat in order to make it to the final big bad at the end. What's fascinating is that, while the audience knows this is the set-up, the moves all feel organic to the nature of film itself. These don't feel like vignettes or a series of set pieces that are just plopped in. Bryan is driving through the snow, hits a woman, and meets up with a cop. When the cop ends up dead, Bryan's car (for funny reasons) ends up disabled sending him to an isolated farmhouse. He needs to escape the house before making it to the next obstacle he needs to defeat. If you're a gamer, or just someone who loves movies, odds are you'll be screaming at the screen (internally, please) at how you'd overcome these challenges.
And, really, Abrams is the sole character throughout the entire movie. Other faces like that of Paul Walter Hauser or Kali Reis pop in, but they're just as quickly gone. Abrams is the Job by which everything is funneled through. Abrams brings a Buster Keaton-level of deadpan humor to every sequence, while also possessing the comedic timing (and piercing shriek) of Ryan Gosling. Bryan's moral conundrum is his decision whether he wants to have children, and throughout the night he's given numerous gory opportunities to reconcile with that, whether it's confronting a mutating little girl or a bloody maternity ward. We're charmed by his normality. He only knows how to shoot games "from video games," and is generally impatient and terrible at everything he attempts. And yet Abrams brings such vulnerability and charm that it's easy to spent 90 minutes watching him be inept.
Other performers do pop up and are solid, though they're not given any more depth or personality than video game NPCs meant to deliver expositions during a cut scene. The aforementioned Paul Walter Hauser and Kali Reis pop up to help explain what Bryan is carrying. Reis's character, Maxine, is introduced as a badass enforcer for the Umbrella Corporation, the organization at the head of the Resident Evil franchise. But she's hastily dispatched with zero fanfare, more so the result of lazy storytelling than anything naturally occurring in the story. After hyping up a badass it'd be nice to see her actually do something for more than a second. Hauser brings his natural ability for affability, with a smarmy edge that's fun to see. Zach Cherry is the only other actor of substance in the entire narrative and he's also a lot of fun. But, mind you, these aren't necessarily characters, but people that populate the frame to move Bryan along.
The gore is ramped up to 120% here, with bodies and heads outright exploding. The previously mentioned maternity ward sequence is chock-a-block with blood, oozing pustules, and a CGI baby/mutant that definitely isn't rendered perfectly. Most of the effects feel practical, and Cregger isn't opposed to making the violence utterly jarring. A sequence of Bryan running through the empty streets as people run alongside rooftops and jump off feels like an extension of his famous Weapons run. The violence certainly feels disgusting, but there's an air of levity in how explosive and ridiculous, almost cartoonish, it is.
Much like any video game, things get a bit downbeat once the final aims are achieved. Though, after 95 minutes at such a breathless pace, it's nice to save something that feels a bit chill. However, the final moments do feel a bit clunky in their desire to end things. Fingers crossed there are more stories to tell (and that Cregger is open to telling them).
Kristen Lopez
Resident Evil is a surprise. A joyously anarchic bit of gory fun! Austin Abrams is fantastic, and more than proves his ability to hold a movie together. The third act is clunky, and the movie never shies away from being a video game adaptation, but everything just works. It's a fun bit of mess you won't want to escape from.
Grade: B
Resident Evil is in theaters Friday.
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