Review: Resident Evil (2026)
I close my 31 for 31 out with another highly rated horror film from what turned out to be a bumper crop this year. Tune on tomorrow to wrap up with Scott's take on yet one more.
Time and again, I have stated that I think we are living through the greatest period of horror cinema since the eighties, possibly ever. 2026 may not have produced an individual movie that will be remembered as a high water mark for the era, but the sheer volume of good-to-great horror releases this year is quite impressive. Five of the six 2026 films I reviewed for 31 for 31 were at least a B+ in my mind, and that isn't counting movies that I caught up with and liked but didn't tackle for the marathon: Backrooms, Buffet Infinity, Iron Lung, Over Your Dead Body, Ready or Not 2, They Will Kill You. Zach Cregger, who has contributed to the halo of the mid-2010s through mid-2020s horror renaissance with great flicks like Weapons and Barbarian, bolsters the 2026 roster with another strong entry in Resident Evil. I firmly believe that Cregger achieved everything that he set out to do, even if he didn't fully sustain what I enjoyed the most about the film all the way until the end.
Resident Evil, for the uninitiated, started its life as a survival horror video game. It spawned numerous sequels, and then numerous movies loosely set in the same universe. I enjoy video games, but I'm undoubtedly less of a "gamer" than the average person in my demographic. I've never played a Resident Evil game, and I have limited exposure to the survival horror genre in general, but it is still evident to me that Resident Evil is written and directed to approximate that type of gaming experience. In some places, particularly early in the movie, I think it works incredibly well. In others, I'm less convinced. One the positive side of the ledger, I really appreciate the way that the film replicates the inventory management aspect of gaming. Every time the protagonist scores a new, more powerful gun, it feels necessary to combat the tougher enemies he is encountering, but also represents a "leveling up" of the character as he gains more experience in the intense environment he finds himself in. Similarly, I found myself filled with anxiety with every missed shot or dropped bullet, because that might mean he doesn't have one when he needs it down the line. These are common video game tropes, but ironically they bring an additional layer of realism to the scenes. It is most other movies, where guns are abundant and ammunition is essentially infinite, that lack verisimilitude. Another game-adjacent element I enjoyed early on was the way that you are always reminded of previous "stages". Shit really starts to hit the fan during a scene where a cop car has flipped over in the snow, and our hero's car is parked next to it. For the next twenty minutes, that scene is shown in the background of the latest setting, a farm house, and then a barn, almost like you're seeing the world map in between encounters. That sense of progressing from stage to stage continues throughout the film, with my favorite stage involving a sprint down a city street with tall buildings on both sides (I won't spoil the specifics). Eventually, though, I started questioning if the predictable beats of a video game were helping or hurting the movie.
Before I get too far ahead of myself, I should describe the plot just a bit. Austin Abrams plays a medical courier who seems to be barely holding his shit together on a personal level. His girl is possibly (probably) pregnant and that fact is threatening to bring a level of seriousness to his life that he is profoundly uncomfortable with. Little does he know that events are about to transpire that dwarf his domestic concerns. As he picks up a last-minute job to escort a highly critical package to the neighboring Racoon City through a dangerous snow storm, he embarks on a journey that will put him in the path of creepy near-zombies, tentacular parasites, multi-limbed abominations, and just about every other kind of gross horror that the combined forces of the Resident Evil game designers and Cregger's team could concoct. Abrams' character is the polar opposite of the protagonist of the other RE movie I reviewed this year. Mila Jovovich played an unflappable ninja assassin with mystical powers, while Abrams portrays a comically average dude who isn't good with guns or the critical thinking that seems to be required for his survival, and by extension the survival of humanity. Much tension and humor is wrung out of his mis-handling of each escalating challenge, and particularly his bemused, exasperated reaction. He's a hero for simply pressing on when the natural reaction would be freezing in uncomprehending terror, but the character risks losing the audience a bit when his lack of capability seems to be paired with a failure to appreciate the seriousness of the situation, especially as it becomes more clear how dire things are for the entire world (including, presumably, his girlfriend and unborn child). The thing that keeps us on his side is his fundamental sense of decency. At every turn, he makes the decision to help others, even when it is maddeningly obvious to the audience that its the wrong decision. Zombie movies usually can't wait to rub our faces in the impossible moral choices that characters have to make, rewarding self-preservation and punishing altruism, so it is refreshing that this slacker courier character is allowed to be a good person pretty much throughout the film.
Back to the video game stuff, my biggest gripe with the approach is that the pacing of the movie, mimicking the common game design of a puzzle/battle scenario followed by brief travel to the next, slightly harder, puzzle/battle scenario, started to wear thin about halfway through. I truly loved the first 3rd or so of this film and I was legitimately scared multiple times. The balance of humor and horror was perfect, and I was wondering if I was watching not only the best movie of 2026, but the best yet of Cregger's career. Eventually, though, I feel like the humor started taking more of the spotlight as the scares came to rely more on ever escalating shocks in the form of the crazy design or sheer number of the creatures, and less on crafting scary scenes through suspense and withholding information. This is also a very jump scare-reliant movie, and those first half dozen or so really grabbed me as I sat in the dark theater, but eventually you get a little desensitized and it becomes easier to predict the rhythm of the scares as the movie goes on. Another game-specific experiment that Cregger deploys is playing with the "first-person shooter" view that would be familiar to most anyone who has picked up a controller in the past thirty years. Those scenes approximate the source material a little too well, and I found it jarring to essentially switch between mediums in the middle of the movie.
I definitely enjoyed Resident Evil, and it was absolutely a worthwhile theater experience. I do wish it had maintained its early momentum, but even in the later parts of the movie I was having fun and could appreciate how well the film accomplished the novel things it was attempting to pull of. This will no doubt be the first of many RE movies, hopefully by Cregger, as its box office success and the legacy of the franchise pretty much demand it. I'll be happy to sign up for the sequels as long as they maintain the humor, humanity and creativity of this one.
That wraps up the marathon for me, I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed watching and writing. Let's do it again in eleven months.
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