What’s It About

During the alternate events of Resident Evil 2 (1998), Bryan, a medical courier, is in the process of making a delivery when a sudden outbreak forces him to fight for survival.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Let me be straight with you: the new Resident Evil is fire. Nobody walked into this one with high hopes. Seven earlier movies slid downhill one after another, and then Netflix handed us a series that fans would rather forget. Then Zach Cregger, the filmmaker behind Barbarian and Weapons, stepped up and pulled off a real comeback. The reason is simple. He understands that you have to build a great horror movie first, and only then sprinkle in the fan favorites. The story follows Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, a medical courier who is only trying to finish his shift. His job is to carry an important package through a snowstorm toward Raccoon City. Anybody from the Midwest knows a snowy night drive is stressful enough without monsters. Once the night turns ugly, the camera hardly ever leaves him, and he spends a lot of that time muttering to himself while the world falls apart around him. Cregger knows how to squeeze tension out of a scene. Starting out with regular zombies and twisted creatures that ignore the normal zombie rules. Playing with empty space, much like the game, turns a quiet hallway or a dark corner into the worst feeling you can imagine, and you still grip your armrest because you know something is about to move. And yes, I jumped more than once (along with the others in the crowded theater I attended). Now, I can hear the gamers already. In the games, the hero is usually a cop, not a delivery guy. But Cregger’s choice works because Bryan feels like one of us. He is a regular dude with zero training and no clue how to handle an emergency this big. He starts out as a scared nerd, then slowly turns into somebody who can barely hold his own against these monsters. It plays like watching a character level up. A few first-person shots even put the controller in your hands, so it feels like a survival horror game is running right in front of you. The action gets wild. At one point, zombies hurl themselves off buildings just to reach Bryan. Through all of it, Austin Abrams carries the film. Cregger gives him a real role instead of a body to run and scream, and Abrams uses every inch of it. He plays the everyman perfectly. You yell at the screen, begging him not to do the dumb thing, yet you root for him the whole time anyway. Keep an eye on him, because he could become this generation’s Bruce Campbell, the hero of the Evil Dead movies, a series you can clearly feel behind this one. Cregger also studied the right teachers. He borrowed from horror classics like The Thing and 28 Days Later instead of copying the old games, which feel clunky and hard to play today. It is a real horror film first, with video game touches sprinkled on top. You do not need to know a thing about Resident Evil to enjoy it. If you do know the games, you will notice how carefully he handled them. Heading into the  final stretch was absolutely insane, and it holds some of the best horror filmmaking I have seen in years. The cinematography plants you right beside Bryan, so you see everything he sees. Trust me, he sees a lot of twisted stuff. The gore hits hard, but it never feels cheap. Every drop of it serves the story. It is not only the best movie in this franchise, it might be the best live-action video game movie ever made. Cregger took a dead series and breathed new life into it. If you love horror, go see it. If you love the games, you will be happy that he respected the source while still building something new. And that ending? It leaves you hungry for more. The door is wide open for sequels, and I hope the studio keeps Cregger in the director’s chair. This is how you reboot a franchise. Not just new faces, but a new take from a different point of view. You build something fresh that honors what the actual fans loved without getting chained to a lore that didn’t fully exist. So yes, Resident Evil is that good. It is scary, it is funny, it is gory in all the right ways, and it gives us a hero worth caring about. What else do you want from a horror movie?

OUR RATING – A REVIVED 9