I went in expecting a grim march through Raccoon City. That is not what Zach Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten made. Their Resident Evil is a survival horror movie with a lot more comedy in it than I was ready for. It runs about 93 minutes and it uses all of them well.
Nobody here is qualified for this
Austin Abrams plays Bryan. He is a medical courier. That is the whole résumé. He is not a super soldier or a corporate operative and he has no training that helps him once the city comes apart. The comedy works because of that. Nobody is standing over a corpse with a punchline ready. The funny stuff comes from watching an ordinary person react to something insane while completely out of his depth.
Abrams is very good at this. He plays the panic straight and lets the absurdity do its own work. I laughed a few times and then immediately felt bad about it because the movie had already moved on to something awful.
Why the regular guy makes it scarier
An action hero turns survival horror into a competence problem. You watch someone who knows what they are doing and you wait to see how they do it. Bryan does not know what he is doing. So the movie becomes a luck problem instead. Every room he walks into is a guess. Every decision could be the stupid one. That uncertainty is doing more work here than any set piece could.
It also keeps the stakes honest. When a character has no plan you stop assuming the movie has one for him.
The nasty parts still land
The creature and zombie effects are excellent. There is real weight and real texture to them and Cregger knows when to stop being funny and let the horror take the room. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser round out a cast that makes this version of Raccoon City feel populated rather than staged.
Where fans may split
This is a different approach to Resident Evil and I do not think it will land for everyone. Some longtime fans want the grim version and there is enough humor here to get in the way of that. Others may want a story built more directly around the characters and mythology they already know from the games. Those are fair reactions and I am not going to pretend the whole fanbase will fall in line behind this thing. I liked it. I also understand the people who will not.
It opened Fantastic Fest and is now in theaters. It is funny when you do not expect it and mean when it needs to be. Worth your time.
4/5