Resident Evil

After eight movies and a TV series, the popular video game Resident Evil has been wrung dry in non-game media. But like Hannah Einbinder’s character in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, hired to breathe life into “zombie IP,” director and co-writer Zach Cregger brings his trademark horror-comedy combo to the goings-on at the Umbrella Corporation, resulting in a sprightly, terrifying, and utterly entertaining hunk of blood-candy that will no doubt give the franchise another go-round.

Having never played the game nor seen any of the earlier movies, I cannot speak to how this Resident Evil fits in the overall scheme of the property. (There will, no doubt, be many reviews that will dig deep into this history.) What I can say is that this brisk 90-minute thriller plays like a great series pilot: it builds the world, establishes the crisis, and carves out time to create meaningful personal stakes for its protagonist.

Those stakes land a lot harder than they otherwise might have thanks to an empathetic and beautifully crafted lead performance from Austin Abrams. The young actor has demonstrated himself to be an intuitive comedic and dramatic actor in a number of film and television projects, but if you saw him in Wolfs — where he spends most of the movie underdressed for winter weather, falling off buildings and attempting to elude the pursuit of George Clooney and Brad Pitt — you know that Abrams can hold attention even when he’s by himself. That skill gets a workout here, as Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten (Ballerina) frequently isolate Abrams’ character Bryan over the course of one very challenging, terrifying night.

Bryan works as a medical courier, delivering to hospitals those insulated zip-up cases that contain a vital organ or other essential healthcare cargo. He’s about to clock out one night when he’s offered double rate to take a package up to Raccoon City; he lies and says his car is outfitted for wintry mountain roads, although we soon see him skidding around. He accidentally hits a pedestrian who suddenly appears from out of a dark forest, and when he stops to find her, he realizes she’s staggered a bloody trail back into the woods. She’s still alive (if staring blankly and holding her hands out in an odd fashion), so he attempts to get her to the hospital. And then mounting levels of all hell break loose.

Anyone even passingly familiar with the Resident Evil saga knows that Bryan has stumbled into the beginning of a zombie outbreak, and as the night continues, and he encounters many a fearsomely mutated person (and animal). This courier will become personally involved with the horrors around him, while occasional phone calls with his girlfriend give him additional motivation to make it out of the nightmare alive.

In true video-game narrative fashion, Bryan keeps finding locks that need keys, weapons that need bullets, and impossible passageways that need him to think past their dead ends, but part of what makes him so relatable is the fact that he’s no action hero — more than once, he laments over the fact that he’s “bad at guns.” Abrams knows his way around a droll wisecrack, and he can also convey terror in his expressive eyes, which makes him the perfect vehicle for what Cregger does so well, mixing notes of humor into moments of terror (and vice versa). The director’s go-to editor Joe Murphy keeps the action and the jokes moving along at just the right clip, and allows memorable moments for a bevy of talented character actors (including Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, and Zach Cherry) while always keeping the focus on Abrams.

There’s room in the world for dread-soaked horror that contemplates the worst of human nature, and based on the sporadic phone calls he makes throughout, there’s room here for assigning metaphorical meaning to Bryan’s horrifying series of tasks. But every so often, it’s fun just to scream and laugh at those horrifying tasks, accompanied as they are by hideous mutations that barf acid. Fun is the main agenda of this new Resident Evil, delivered by a genre specialist.

Director: Zach Cregger
Screenwriters: Zach Cregger & Shay Hatten
Cast: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser
Executive producers: Oliver Berben, Richard Wright, Robert Bernacchi
Producers: Robert Kulzer, Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Victor Hadida, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan
Director of photography: Dariusz Wolski
Production design: Tom Hammock
Editing: Joe Murphy
Music: Ryan and Hays Holladay
Sound design: Kami Asgar, Erin Oakley, supervising sound editor
Production companies: Columbia Pictures, Constantin Film, Davis Films
In English
90 minutes