Resident Evil 2026 Movie Review
“Resident Evil” is a survival horror film based on the video game series of the same name by Capcom. Directed and co-written by Zach Cregger (“Barbarian”, “Weapons”) and starring Austin Abrams in the lead role, it pulls off the near-impossible task of providing the ideal middle ground movie to please both fans of the franchise and regular horror aficionados alike.
As he nears the end of his shift one wintery night, medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) decides to take one last job of delivering an unknown package to a hospital in the isolated Raccoon City. While heading down a long and slippery road, Bryan suddenly runs over a woman who jumped in front of his car and urgently tries to assist her with her injuries. After the woman quickly reanimates and attempts to kill him, Bryan realises that some kind of viral outbreak has occurred around him, as he soon finds himself targeted by other people affected by an illness that causes its hosts to mutate into violently hostile creatures. Determined to complete the job no matter what, Bryan desperately fights his way through all of these monstrous mutants coming from every direction, knowing that getting his package’s contents to its intended destination could mean the difference between life or death.
Debuting three decades ago, the “Resident Evil” franchise has since gone on to become one of the most important video game series of all time, influencing several other survival horror games in its wake. As well as video games, the series has also been credited as being an inspiration for many other zombie-related forms of media, ranging from movies to comic books. In regards to its own foray into cinema, the franchise holds the record for the most amount of live-action adaptations of a video game, although the overall quality of these films is widely considered to be very poor by critics and fans equally. However, thanks to the emerging horror maestro Zach Cregger, his 2026 film titled simply “Resident Evil” finally gives the series a worthwhile cinematic adaptation that should satisfy just about all audiences, whether they’re hardcore fans or curious newcomers.
Loosely paralleling the events of the second game, this story takes place over the course of one night from the perspective of a single person, in this case, the lowly medical courier Bryan. Urgent for some extra cash to pay for his girlfriend’s unexpected pregnancy, Bryan takes the job of transporting a package to Raccoon City hospital, which is located far away from where he usually operates. As he drives through the snowy winter’s night, Bryan is shocked when a woman jumps out on the road all of a sudden, causing him to accidentally hit her with his car. Tending to the woman’s potentially fatal injuries, Bryan is horrified to watch her immediately come back to life and attack him, causing him to flee to an isolated farm house in the woods.
Arriving at the farming property, Bryan soon finds himself chased down by a vicious large dog, leaving him with no other option but to quickly take shelter inside a nearby barn. Just as Bryan believes he has given this angry canine the slip, the dog violently breaks through the wall behind him and turns into a frightening tentacled creature intent on devouring him alive. After killing this monstrous dog, Bryan deduces that some kind of outbreak is the root cause for all of this, and searches the farm house for firearms or anything else he could use to defend himself while delivering his package to Raccoon City. If you have ever played a “Resident Evil” game or watched any horror movie with a similar set-up, you will likely know where things are going to head from this point forward. Nevertheless, thanks to the slick sheen of professionalism Zach Cregger injects into his storytelling, he is able to keep you emotionally invested regardless of your expectations.
Similar to both “Barbarian” and “Weapons”, Cregger once again effectively builds up a creepy atmosphere to hold the audience’s attention throughout even the film’s most predictable moments. In particular, this can be seen during parts where Bryan is investigating rooms to see if they are safe to enter, as these segments are framed in ways that make it seem as though anything could happen. Locations like these could either be filled with mutated monsters hiding in dark corners or a seemingly harmless elevator with no apparent hindrances at first glance. Again, this draws strong comparisons to the very games the movie is based upon, as exploring different places to advance the story was one of the key gameplay features.
Additionally, another allusion to the games is Zach Cregger’s framing of the camera either from a third-person or first-person perspective. This is shown to us in a handful of scenes where we see the action take place from behind Bryan walking through a building or from his point-of-view holding a gun heading through a darkened sewer. In most other cases, I would find this kind of creative decision to be a tacky reminder that the audience is watching a movie based on a video game, yet Cregger somehow managed to make it feel cinematically engaging, likely because he chooses not to dwell on it too heavily. As a result, we have a film that is able to pay homage to its gaming source material that also works perfectly fine as a nicely shot horror movie in its own right.
Another surprisingly effective aspect of the film is its use of comic relief. Though the “Resident Evil” games do have some memorably comedic moments (like the infamous “Jill sandwich” line), this movie utilises them in ways that actually feel earned, as opposed to shoehorned in for the mere sake of it. There were some humorous scenes where Bryan is trying to figure out how to fire whatever gun he finds lying around, showing that he is clearly inexperienced in the field of firearm usage. Rather than making you cringe, this makes Bryan’s character more relatable to audiences, since he is just a courier and not a gun enthusiast. Reportedly, the original cut of the movie had even more funny moments but Zach Cregger decided to cut some out altogether to avoid turning the film into an outright comedy. On that note, I am definitely curious to see that version of the film if it ever surfaces one day.
In the role of the film’s hapless protagonist Bryan, Austin Abrams does a great job carrying the whole movie completely on his own. As mentioned earlier, Bryan is a relatable everyman who just so happens to be caught in the middle of an apocalyptic outbreak, meaning he is greatly under-qualified to deal with these deadly circumstances as they occur. You could liken this to somebody playing a “Resident Evil” game for the first time, where the player is thrown right into the thick of it with little time to figure out the controls before being attacked. Despite being an entirely original creation for the movie, Abrams’s portrayal of Bryan still seems like he would fit nicely among the other “Resident Evil” characters like Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, or Ada Wong, although none of these familiar faces appear in this film.
Successfully working its source material into an otherwise well-made horror movie, Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” will likely be remembered as one of the greatest video game film adaptations of all time (though that bar wasn’t very high to begin with). Even if you’ve never played any of the games before, this standalone film still works entirely on its own creative merits, as its simple plot allows novices to easily follow along without any prior knowledge of the series. With all of that said, unless you’re a franchise purist willing to pick apart anything a casual fan like myself may have overlooked, this film is definitely worth seeing for anyone craving their fix of survival horror, as well as those who enjoyed Zach Cregger’s previous two movies. As for me, I got the best of both worlds.
