Resident Evil is a film you don’t just watch. You feel it. And somehow, this might be the least Resident Evil Resident Evil we’ve ever had, while also being the one that feels the most like the game. It sounds like a contradiction, but I think that’s exactly where this film finally finds something previous adaptations have been struggling with for years.
I have to admit, I didn’t go into this with high expectations. If anything, I had some concerns. Zach Cregger’s Weapons didn’t really work for me, and hearing before the screening that his Resident Evil wouldn’t stick particularly close to the games only added to them. I wasn’t sure whether it would still capture the atmosphere and essence of Resident Evil, or whether the title would become familiar packaging for something that had very little to do with what was inside. A recognisable name is easy to sell. Making a film that actually belongs to that name without copying the games is something else entirely.
The funny thing is, I’ve always had a soft spot for Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil films. Starting in 2002, that series grew into six movies and became its own strange box-office phenomenon. They were never particularly sophisticated, nor especially interested in following the games closely. If anything, they often felt like B-movies dressed in an A-movie format: simple, loud, increasingly ridiculous action films that knew exactly what kind of entertainment they wanted to be. And maybe that was their charm. You could switch your brain off for a couple of hours, watch Milla Jovovich fight zombies and increasingly absurd monsters, and have fun with it. There was a lightness to them that clearly found an audience, especially internationally, and I was part of it. I enjoyed those films for what they were. I just never felt particularly close to Resident Evil while watching them.
Welcome to Raccoon City took a different approach in 2021, moving much closer to the games, and I remember being fairly positive about it when I watched it. The strange thing is that five years later, I barely remember the film. I can recall far more from the old Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies than I can from Welcome to Raccoon City. And perhaps that says more than going back now and picking apart everything the film did or didn’t do right. I enjoyed it in the moment, but it never really sank into me. It didn’t leave behind enough of an emotion, an atmosphere or even a particular moment to stay with me. Sometimes a film doesn’t have to be bad to disappear. It can simply fail to leave a mark.
What surprised me about this Resident Evil is that it never feels caught between those two previous approaches. It has no interest in becoming another action film loosely wearing the Resident Evil name, but neither does it seem preoccupied with proving its loyalty by recreating everything we already know. Cregger seems far more confident in letting the film find its own identity within this world. Strangely, the further it moves away from literal recreation, the closer I felt to Resident Evil itself.
The driving force behind this Resident Evil isn’t a faithful copy of the games, nor does it come from recreating every familiar character, location or moment exactly as we remember them. There is something far more natural in the way it pays respect to its source material. The DNA of the games is woven into the film through details so subtle that someone who has never played Resident Evil might not even realise they’re there. But if you know what you’re looking for, you see them. A typewriter sitting quietly in a room. A familiar herb inside a car. The way a zombie behaves, a particular camera movement, even the way certain situations unfold. None of it stops the film to announce itself as a reference. Instead, these details become quiet nods to the people who know the games without ever getting in the way of everyone else watching. And perhaps that’s the real beauty of it. The film never needs to constantly remind you that this is Resident Evil to convince you that you’re inside its world. At times, I genuinely felt like I was playing the film.
That feeling is there almost from the first minute. Resident Evil doesn’t spend twenty or thirty minutes carefully preparing you for what is about to happen. It drops you into a situation and, before you really have time to settle, you already feel like you’re part of it. You don’t know exactly where it’s taking you yet, but you want to know, and underneath that curiosity there is already this growing sense that something isn’t right. From there, the tension doesn’t arrive in sudden spikes only to disappear again. It keeps building, almost like a steady climb, with each scene adding a little more pressure to the one before it. There are no empty stretches where the film seems to be filling screen time while waiting for something else to happen. It has a natural flow from beginning to end, and every minute feels like it belongs exactly where it is.
The cinematography does more than establish where we are. It guides us through the emotion of being there. Darkness in particular is used phenomenally well. There are moments when almost nothing is happening, yet staring into that darkness creates fear because you have no idea what might be hiding inside it. The image begins building tension before the film has even given you a concrete reason to be afraid. At times, it reminded me of the atmosphere Kubrick created in The Shining, where a relatively simple image combined with the right sound could produce an incredibly powerful emotional response. Resident Evil understands that same principle. The cinematography creates the space for tension while the music pushes it further, giving those moments an emotional tempo until image and sound become almost inseparable. The score isn’t sitting somewhere behind the scene waiting to tell you when something scary is about to happen. It becomes part of what you’re experiencing. This is what I mean when I say music can sometimes be half of what makes a film work. At its best, you don’t just hear the score. You feel the film and almost see the music, until the two seem to switch roles.
Then there is Austin Abrams. Bryan could easily have become another character designed to carry us through the chaos, but Abrams makes him feel like an actual person trapped inside it. He isn’t a soldier, a trained survivor or someone who suddenly discovers that he knows exactly what to do when everything goes to hell. He’s a normal guy, completely out of his depth, and that ordinary quality becomes one of the film’s greatest strengths. You believe his fear because his reactions feel instinctive rather than heroic. You root for him, you laugh at his mistakes, and when things get worse, you’re scared with him rather than watching from a comfortable distance as he survives another scene. Much of the humour grows naturally from Bryan’s reactions to increasingly ridiculous situations, rather than feeling like the film has stopped to deliver a joke. Abrams makes that normality completely believable. I haven’t believed in a character this much in a long time.
If there is one thing keeping Resident Evil from feeling almost perfect to me, it’s that it could have used another fifteen or twenty minutes. Not because I wanted more for the sake of having more, but because the final stretch could have been pushed a little further, allowing the tension to build for longer and giving the ending more time to land. As it is, the film reaches that point slightly too quickly, almost as if it ends when you’re ready for it to tighten the screw one more time.
By the time the credits rolled, what I felt most was satisfaction, but with a small sense of hunger still underneath it. The film had given me enough to feel fulfilled. What stayed with me, though, was how much I still wanted more. It’s that strange feeling of already being full while your appetite is asking for another bite. And perhaps that says more about Resident Evil than any criticism of its running time could.
Ultimately, Cregger understands the soul and essence of Resident Evil. He knows how this world is supposed to feel and uses everything cinema has to offer to translate that feeling to the screen. The cinematography, the darkness, the music, the tension and the performance at its centre all pull in the same direction, bringing us closer to this world until we’re experiencing a small part of it rather than watching safely from the outside.
That’s what I was missing from the previous adaptations. This might be the least Resident Evil Resident Evil we’ve ever had on the surface, but underneath it understands the identity of these games better than any of them. It doesn’t succeed because it copies the game. It succeeds because it understands how the game feels. And somehow, it turns that feeling into cinema.