Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Is Bloody, Bonkers, and Surprisingly Human

In a world populated by biological weapons, monsters, zombie outbreaks, and super soldiers who can apparently punch boulders into submission, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil reboot is surprisingly a fairly grounded take on the franchiseFranchiseA series of films, shows, or games built around shared characters and a shared universe, often spanning many sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise. Franchises dominate box offices and streaming, and theirGo to Franchise Glossary’s chaos.

That is largely thanks to Bryan, played by newcomer Austin Abrams. He is not Leon Kennedy. He is not Chris Redfield. He is not some government-trained badass who has spent years preparing for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. He’s a medical courier who finds himself in Raccoon City on an exceptionally bad night, caught in the middle of an outbreak while simply trying to do his job. The film’s official premise has him racing to make a medical delivery as everything around him collapses into chaos.

That everyman quality is one of the smartest things about Cregger’s approach to the material. Rather than remaking Resident Evil 2 (where the film’s events take place) beat for beat, the movie exists on the periphery of the game’s events. Cregger has described it as another story unfolding in parallel with the Raccoon City outbreak, allowing him to borrow the world, atmosphere, and mechanics of the games without simply photocopying one of them. And, thankfully, it still feels like Resident Evil.

There is horror here, obviously, along with the expected body horror and increasingly grotesque biological monstrosities that have always made the series so much more interesting than just “zombies with guns.” The film also understands that the franchiseFranchiseA series of films, shows, or games built around shared characters and a shared universe, often spanning many sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise. Franchises dominate box offices and streaming, and theirGo to Franchise Glossary has always occupied a strange tonal space. It can be genuinely frightening one moment and completely ridiculous the next. And that campiness is baked into the experience.

For viewers who are not familiar with the games, some of the jokes and one-liners might occasionally feel like they have wandered in from another movie. But for anyone who understands Resident Evil’s particular brand of cheese, the humor isn’t a tonal mistake, but a part of the franchiseFranchiseA series of films, shows, or games built around shared characters and a shared universe, often spanning many sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise. Franchises dominate box offices and streaming, and theirGo to Franchise Glossary’s DNA. The games have long balanced dread with absurdity, and the film’s director has made that contradiction part of his own horror vocabulary through Barbarian and the Oscar-winning Weapons. Interestingly, he revealed before the release that test audiences actually thought an earlier version of the film was too funny, prompting him to remove several jokes.

Even after those cuts, there is still plenty of humor in the final film—and that is a good thing. What makes the jokes work is that they are surrounded by genuine horror. You can laugh, then immediately be reminded that the person laughing is also trapped in a nightmare full of things that should probably never have evolved.

Cregger is also clearly interested in reproducing the feeling of playing the games rather than simply recreating their plots. One of the clearest examples is the progression of Bryan’s weapons: pistol, shotgun, then machine gun. He has specifically cited that escalation as part of the game-like structure he wanted to preserve.

That progression sounds simple, but it gets to the heart of what makes the movie work. The early reactions to the film have already picked up on that balance of horror and camp, with premiere attendees describing it as gory, funny, frightening, fast-paced, and unusually faithful to the games’ atmosphere.

Cregger’s Resident Evil, for all its monsters, mayhem, and increasingly ludicrous escalation, remembers that the franchise works best when it starts with one ordinary person, one bad decision, and the creeping realization that there is absolutely nowhere safe to go.

Resident Evil opens in Philippine theaters starting today, September 16, 2026.