Resident Evil ~ Review

By: [email protected] on
I have only played one Resident Evil game in my life. It was Resident Evil 3, and I never got past the first level. I spent most of my time being chased by zombies and other monsters while desperately trying to find a gun and ammunition, failing to solve the puzzle that would let me escape the first level, and getting stuck on a wall. I guess what I’m saying is that I suck at video games. In Zach Cregger’s new adaptation of Resident Evil, the protagonist Bryan (Austin Abrams) spends the majority of the time desperately trying to find guns and ammunition while being chased by zombies and has difficulty getting around obstacles. Never have I felt so seen by a movie!
 
Bryan (Abrams) is an ordinary medical courier who has just learned that his girlfriend, Michelle (an unseen Sara Paxton), might be pregnant. Bryan is good-natured but lazy, and he's noticeably shaken by the possibility that he might be a father. When tasked with a delivery to Raccoon City Hospital up in the snowy mountains of Colorado, he decides to take it. If you know anything about the Resident Evil games and the fictional Raccoon City, then you know he is in for one bad night. And indeed, his trip to the hospital is beset with zombies, and a whole manner of gross, fleshy, toothy monsters.
 
I was worried when it was announced that Zach Cregger was making a new Resident Evil adaptation. It’s concerning when an independent voice gets stuck in the franchise perpetual motion machine, but I had nothing to fear, as Resident Evil feels distinctive to Cregger’s voice. Cregger and Shay Hatten’s script is funny and tense in equal measure and doesn’t dive too deeply into the lore of the videogame series it’s adapted from. The film alludes to a wider story, but we follow Bryan as he flails around helplessly trying to survive. Resident Evil reminded me most of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, where another lovable slacker has to use his wits to survive against various monsters. Cregger’s direction is wonderfully slick, and he uses a lot of center framing to recreate the third-person vibe of the games. If the film has a problem, it’s that it doesn’t have a complete conclusion, but maybe there’s hope for a sequel.
 
Abrams is mostly on his own through the film (aside from the monsters), but he does interact with a few notable other cast members. Paul Walter Hauser shows up as a corporate flunky, Kali Reis plays a badass military officer, and Zach Cherry is hilarious as a scientist. But Abrams carries the whole movie with a wiry energy — as an ordinary dude struggling to survive. More than that, the script asks him to be surprisingly emotional at points, which he pulls off with aplomb.
 
Resident Evil is a tense, funny, and gory blast from start to finish. And even if you suck at video games, you’ll still have a great time.
 
Three and a half out of Four Stars