Resident Evil (2026) Review

Zach Cregger has said he never saw the earlier Resident Evil films, and his reboot, written with Shay Hatten, skips their lore and the games' famous characters. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier with a package for Raccoon City General Hospital on the night of the outbreak, and the film follows him from a farmhouse to a tunnel, the sewers and a maternity ward, each stop a fresh level with a fresh monster. At 95 minutes it never stops to explain itself.

Abrams, who was also in Cregger's Weapons, is why it works. Bryan is scared, clumsy and funny, a man who manages to shoot his own car, and Cregger, who cut most of the jokes after test audiences found an early version too funny, lets that panic carry the comedy. Dariusz Wolski shot it for IMAX, the environments are varied and nasty, and a creature that keeps absorbing its victims gives the chase a spine. The plotting between set pieces is thin.

Its 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 81 on Metacritic are the best marks yet for a film based on a video game. William Bibbiani at TheWrap called it Cregger's best film; Phil de Semlyen at Time Out found it more goofy and good-looking than frightening. It opened to 60 million dollars in North America.