The Resident Evil game franchise has been around since 1996 and remains one of the most beloved on any platform. The Resident Evil movie franchise started in 2002 and…I mean, it must have fans somewhere. I like the first one decently enough. So the prospect of a new movie coming from an exciting horror director with video game chops is particularly exciting. The resultant movie is far less bloated and overwrought than the Paul W.S. Anderson, nor is it an attempt to compact the game’s story into a single movie like Welcome to Raccoon City. No, instead, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is like watching what it feels like to play a video game.
This Resident Evil is stripped down to the barest essentials, a brisk 90-some minutes, that starts small and escalates to absurd levels by the end. The path of the lead character Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a quest narrative, travelling from Point A to Point B, facing all manner of zombified, mutated, or otherwise effed-up things along the way. Each new setting features a new threat and Bryan gets a bigger and better gun as he goes through his quest to reach the end point.
What Cregger does here that I like so much is that we essentially follow Bryan from beginning to end with almost no deviation. The camera follows over Bryan’s shoulder as he enters a new location. At times, we even get a video gamey first-person POV shot down the sight of his gun. It isn’t constant but it gives the viewer the feeling of a video game. And while nothing in the movie directly references characters or specifics from any one game, Cregger offers many small Easter eggs that game players will instantly recognize. In one of the trailers, we got to see a “safe room” with a typewriter. This is just one of many.
As shouldn’t surprise you too much if you know Cregger’s previous films, Resident Evil is very, very funny. Abrams mutters and swears to himself the entire way through, much more real person than video game hero. His reactions to the increasing horror of the situations always made me laugh. It’s a toned down, more likeable version of the tweaker her played in Weapons. Bryan is not Chris Redfield or Leon Kennedy. He’s just a guy. The few members of Umbrella we meet are not Albert Wesker. They’re just people who work for a corrupt company. This might annoy hardcore RE fans, but again, the movie gets the vibe even if the tone is much more comedic.
The movie’s plot basically is the premise. Bryan is a medical courier who arrives at a hospital to drop off an organ for transplant while on the phone with his girlfriend discussing the recent discovery that she’s pregnant. Just as he’s about to head home, a doctor offers him double if he can get a top-priority something to Raccoon City General ASAP. It’s a blizzard outside and his car slips and slides all over the place before crashing into a woman who seems more messed up than just a car accident.
Here begins Bryan traveling from scenario to scenario, dealing with zombies and mutating body horrors as the T-Virus (a term the movie never utters) ravages Raccoon City and the nearby mountains. At one point, Bryan reaches a farmhouse and we can see in the otherwise dark night behind him the remnants of his previous three encounters. Again, it’s a video game in movie form. If you’ve played the Resident Evil games, you won’t recognize any specific location, but you’ll recognize the types. An isolated house, a dark tunnel, the sewers, a hospital, the streets of the city, etc.
All of this works really well, Abrams is a fun protagonist, and the effects and creatures are exceptionally gross (in the best way). But what keeps me from loving the movie is that, in all the propelling from thing to thing to thing, any humanity of the characters fall flat. The movie is shockingly bereft of side characters, and those we do meet don’t stick around long. What should be the emotional throughline of the movie, with Bryan trying to get home to his girlfriend and learning to grow up, doesn’t ever hit, and really just disappears by the third act.
These aren’t game-breaking quibbles or anything. As I said, I had a good time, Cregger knows how to keep the audience on edge but chuckling the whole time. We watch this doofus have the absolute worst day anyone could have but we relate because at least he knows he’s not cut out for it. As a movie that takes place within the world of Resident Evil, this feels like what would be happening elsewhere while Leon and Claire are dealing with Mr. X or something. It works on its own merits and gives the feeling of the games without ever being one of the games itself.
If you want a fun roller coaster horror movie with loads of good scares and some gnarly body horror, Resident Evil is a blast. Just don’t expect more than that or it might be game over.
⭐ (3.5 of 5)
The post Zach Cregger’s RESIDENT EVIL Is a Body Horror Blast (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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