by Jeffery Rahming, Contributing Writer
With only two feature films to his name, Zach Cregger, previously known only for the sketch comedy show Whitest Kids U’ Know, has found himself as one of the most respected new directors of the decade. Barbarian was one of the biggest surprises of 2021, building a massive cult following through word of mouth. Weapons was an Oscar-winning triumph that hit uncomfortably close to home in today’s political climate. After two genius originals, he was primed to take his first foray into the franchise machine that Hollywood has become. Resident Evil has already had several adaptations, but this new reboot is a real love letter to the games, at least according to Cregger. And while that love feels genuine, something about Resident Evil lacks the punch he brought to his previous films.
Essentially, only one character matters in this story: Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier tasked with bringing a mysterious package to Raccoon City. Should be easy enough, except he must take it up a mountain in the middle of a Colorado blizzard. That seems to be the main problem until, of course, Bryan encounters a mysterious woman in the snow who seems “off,” to say the least. After he runs into her, in quite a literal sense, Bryan quickly begins to realize this is no ordinary delivery.
Cregger nails the basics. Resident Evil is a fun horror gorefest. If you don’t like bile, blood, tentacles, guts, or monstrous combinations of all four of these elements, this isn’t the movie for you. This film is gross in the best way possible. The Resident Evil games, especially the later ones, love absurd creature designs, and they’re well represented here as well. All of them give you a visceral reaction of disgust, which, of course, is what it’s going for whether you’re watching or playing. When one of the main recurring antagonists is just a giant rolling ball of limbs, you’ve already succeeded in making a better adaptation than most of what came before. There’s definitely plenty of fun to be had, and I can see this being a good night out at the movies if you’re a big fan of gory horror films. I’m sure it will be a hit for those audiences. But undeniably, for a director whose last project won an Academy Award, this is a step backward. It’s just nothing special. Cregger still does an incredible job with the visuals, but beyond that, I feel this movie falls a little flat.
For better or worse, the whole film feels like a video game in many ways. Our main character serves as an audience surrogate with little personality of his own. He moves from level to level (or, in film terms, set piece to set piece) with little rhyme or reason, except that’s where the next monster is and he has to survive. At first, these video game tropes are kind of fun, like when Bryan has to shuffle through an abandoned house in search of ammo and weapons, just like the old Resident Evil games, but eventually it starts to feel a little too on the nose. It just barely avoids feeling like a parody of a video game movie, which isn’t what I think it was going for. The plot is very simple in a way that would work wonderfully in a video game, but as a film, it’s just ok. Unlike the many layered twists of Cregger’s previous project, this one has just one pretty big one that I could see leaving some dissatisfied, though I at least thought it was daring, even if it doesn’t really fully hit the “Oh crap!” mark.
Bryan just isn’t an interesting enough character to carry this story on his own. Abrams gives an incredible performance to a character with very little depth. He feels like the annoying college kid who dies in the middle of the second act in most horror movies. A fun enough character archetype but not one that can carry a whole plot by himself. All he really does is freak out and curse every sentence. Which, granted, you would too if you were in his situation, but it feels grating and immature for the sole main character to drop an F-bomb every sentence. It seems odd to complain about cursing in a movie where our protagonist shoots and maims zombified dogs, children, and babies, but if your main character sounds like an Xbox Live lobby, maybe some things could be toned back. Granted, that aspect is probably on purpose; Bryan, in many ways, is supposed to represent a stereotypical gamer. He makes several videogame references throughout the adventure, calling attention to tropes in a way that isn’t as clever as Cregger, and co-writer Shay Hatten clearly think.
Just like the 2000s Resident Evil franchise heavily ripped off The Matrix, this one also feels heavily influenced by the era’s biggest blockbusters, mainly Marvel movies. Similar to the worst of those, any time not spent on the monsters is filled with hit-or-miss comedy. I laughed several times, but even so, I think the humor was a bit much. Especially since there’s pretty much no drama at all behind the scares, with Bryan being the only character we have to latch onto. Reportedly, Cregger cut several jokes after a negative test screening, which is understandable, since the final product is about two to three jokes away from being way too comedic in tone. He balances it well enough, but compared to the delicate dance of social commentary, comedy, horror, and action that Cregger created with Barbarian and Weapons, this one just doesn’t hit the same. You can kind of tell that a significant amount of this was cut down, but unfortunately that was probably to its benefit.
Cregger falls into a lot of clichés that he manages to avoid in his previous movies. Every horror flick needs a “You need to get out of there moment,” but this has so many you can’t take it seriously. By the 4th time Bryan stares at a monstrous creation slowly amassing itself while he gawks at it instead of running like a sane person, I began to wonder if there’s some kind of joke I’m missing. He’s a very typical dumb horror protagonist, and unlike the ones in Barbarian, it doesn’t feel like his dumbness is on purpose. Again, he’s just not that interesting of a protagonist. What’s worse is the small supporting cast that is here is full of some of the best character actors in the business right now. Their characters are funny and instantly likable…and they maybe get five minutes of screen time each, if that. More than likely, they all had more to do in the joke-ier cut of the movie so maybe it was for the best. But I can’t escape the feeling that Cregger assembled what could have been an incredible cast only to waste them completely. I’d love to see a version of this move where these characters were more developed and got to join Bryan on his travels through Raccoon City.
In a year full of great horror projects, Resident Evil will probably be one of the more successful ones, just based on franchise recognition but it doesn’t do much to stand out from the pack. Ever since Get Out, it’s basically become standard for scary movies to be about something other than blood and guts. And while some may beg for the days where we just got mindless gore-fest features all the time, Resident Evil is a good example of why those kinds of films died out. It’s a fun but ultimately hollow experience, and I don’t see anybody going back to it unless they’re hardcore horror fans.
Rating: Just Okay
Resident Evil is currently in theaters.
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