Spoilers ahead!
Content warning: brief mentions of fictional violence
I will preface this article with a disclaimer: I’m not a horror movie fan. I haven’t seen Obsession or The Shining or almost any other horror movie you could name. I don’t usually enjoy them. I do, however, like video games, and all of my self-granted authority to write on the recent Resident Evil movie adaptation — Resident Evil (2026), directed by Zach Cregger — comes from the fact that I have played the games and enjoyed them very much.
Cregger is a rising star in the horror cinema world, with previous hits like Barbarians (2022) and Weapons (2025) arriving to commercial and critical acclaim (from what I understand of the plot, “Resident Evil” would have been a good title for Weapons, but that’s just my opinion). But even with his experience, it was a risk for Cregger to take on adapting the Resident Evil games for the big screen, as no previous Resident Evil film adaptation had ever seen commercial or critical success among the game’s fanbase or wider audience.
The Resident Evil game franchise, developed by the company Capcom in 1996 is a survival-horror game franchise from Japan. It was originally named “Biohazard” in Japanese; that trademark wasn’t available in the US and the English name came from a company-wide naming contest. The classic game series largely follows the stories of various survivors of an out-of-control biological weapon developed by the shadowy Umbrella Corporation. Protagonists fight mutated and virus-infected organisms in post-urban environments ranging from police stations to ruined cities to supposedly abandoned mansions — all with limited resources (most crucially, ammunition). Cregger’s movie sidesteps a lot of the wider game lore and doesn’t follow the storyline of any one game, opting instead to amalgamate elements from different games across the series. The movie focuses on what’s at the very core of the franchise: the gory, science-gone-rogue body horror that defined its essential style and gave rise to the survival horror genre. This has allowed the Resident Evil movie to remain relatively accessible to the wider public while giving a nod to the game’s fanbase — a rarely-achieved balance.
Cregger’s risk has paid off. Resident Evil premiered in Los Angeles on September 15 and was released to the general public on September 18. At the time of writing, it has grossed $216 million globally through the box office alone, with opening weekend pulling in $108 million worldwide against the film’s $75 million production budget. It’s the first Resident Evil movie to cross the $100 million threshold domestically. The film was equally successful among critics and viewers, earning a 96 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest rated video-game-turned-movie adaptation ever. It garnered critical praise for the actors’ performances, its faithfulness to in-game elements, and its use of the fear factor.
The film kicks off with an opening shot of the main character from behind, invoking the perspective of a third-person video game. The audience is introduced to Bryan (Austin Abrams), a meek courier who delivers organs to hospitals. Bryan is contracted for double pay to deliver a high-priority package to the isolated Raccoon City, a task he uses to avoid a difficult conversation with his pregnant girlfriend. On his way into the city, however, he is waylaid by aggressive mutated beings… and so the nightmare begins.
Bryan isn’t an actual character in any of the games, but the fact that he is just an ordinary person makes him feel similar to most of the Resident Evil protagonists. Instead of featuring larger-than-life heroic characters, multiple games in the franchise, such as Resident Evil: Biohazard and Resident Evil: Village put the player into the position of regular people thrust into horrific scenarios. One of the major recurring characters across the game series, Leon S. Kennedy, starts out as a police rookie before becoming trained as a skilled federal agent.
The movie itself plays out much like a video game, and players of the franchise will catch several easter eggs. A scene in which Bryan explores rooms in a farmhouse is reminiscent of the Baker property in Resident Evil: Biohazard, and the overall feeling of the exploration mechanics occur in all of the games. His painstaking accumulation of bullets is a task all players are familiar with, and the inclusion of a
room with a typewriter is a nod to one of the old game save mechanisms in the original Resident Evil games. Other details include Bryan’s green courier box (resembling the healing kits in the games) and the voice message he records for his girlfriend (making reference to similar messages players can recover from deceased characters in the game’s environment).
Cinematographically, the film is also shot to mimic the feeling of playing the video games. The camera is often angled towards what Bryan is looking at through over-the-shoulder third-person shots, or creating tension through first-person perspectives (a fair amount of Resident Evil gamers play in VR; a friend of mine who tried it said he couldn’t bring himself to open the doors in the game). The soundtrack features ominous pulsing tones that reflect the unsettling scenes and environments, suggesting stress to the audience and intensifying the atmosphere of danger. The jumpscares, ever present in any horror media, are effective and well- executed. The movie is also unapologetic in its depiction of survival. Bryan is forced to make harrowing choices in his quest to deliver the package, including blowing the head off of a mutated child to defend his own life. As the movie goes on, Bryan faces progressively stronger and more dangerous enemies, and at one point exclaims, “I only use guns in video games… it’s confusing in real life!”
Abrams is phenomenal in his role. He embodies an appropriate level of sheer terror at his situation, mixed with disgust, disbelief, and an occasional comedic relief that brings much needed levity to the film. His facial expressions are particularly relatable and funny, especially when he displays shock at having done something ludicrous or encountering a new monster. The real stars of the movie, in a way, are the monsters: morbidly obese sewer dwellers, acid spewers, and otherwise mutated creatures. Some of the monsters are recognizable from the Resident Evil game titles, but most are new creations by creature-design legend Shane Mahan and his company Legacy Effects. Inspired by past game installments, they’re skilfully designed to inspire terror through their behaviour, movements, and most critically appearances, amping up the core body-horror element of Resident Evil to the maximum.
Thematically, the film’s main message is about how delaying change will only worsen the bill when it comes time to pay. But I didn’t go to a Resident Evil movie for its moral messaging, and I doubt anyone else did either. The movie isn’t meant as an analysis of community like Weapons is — here, narrative depth isn’t the point. Instead, the blend of action and progression with game-reminiscent cinematography produces a devoted love letter to one of the greatest game franchises of all time. In my opinion, the strongest meaning lies in the film’s title. What makes Resident Evil truly terrifying is that the title implies that what you’re dealing with isn’t some far-off threat, or abstract eldritch horror or magic. Titles like The Last of Us are bleak, while The Walking Dead gets straight to the point but sounds kind of funny, and It is ominous. The name makes it known that the threat is inside your house, so to speak, and emerging from the mundane, which raises the scare factor exponentially.
While avoiding spoilers, the conclusion of the movie — although paced alarmingly quickly to the point of feeling rushed — I found to be appropriate considering Bryan’s character and the elements of the games that Cregger chose to focus on. Of course, you’ll have to go and watch it yourself to form your own opinion on it. It also leaves the door open for a sequel, though no statements on that have been made. I personally think that ending the series with this most recent movie wouldn’t be a bad decision, but if other directors choose to follow in Cregger’s footsteps, some good could definitely come of it. The only way to find out is to keep playing.