“Resident Evil” Review

With “Resident Evil,” Zach Cregger continues to prove himself as cinema’s foremost practitioner of horror as rollercoaster ride, with every quiet moment just part of a torturous climb leading into a steep, heart-stopping plummet less likely to haunt your dreams than leave you with an exhilarated smile at what you’ve just gone through. After leaving the theater, the biggest emotional impression was not one of terror so much as a joy that comes through in every frame, every diabolical set piece that leads into pure mayhem.

Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a simple medical courier wrapping up a long day of delivering frozen organs to hospitals while holding a telephone debate with his girlfriend over what to do about an unexpected pregnancy. Just as he is about to head home to continue the argument in person, Bryan is offered one last delivery for the night for Raccoon City General Hospital. The drive is long and the weather is horrible but the package is high priority and the pay is doubled so Bryan takes the job.

As the roads get worse and his cell phone signal disappears, Bryan runs into the residents of Raccoon City and something is horribly wrong. Unable to turn around, Bryan has no choice but to continue into the city itself in hopes of delivering his package and finding safety from the evil that hounds him.

Bryan is no hero, nor is he an antihero. Rather, he is just some guy we happen to be following on a delivery ride into hell. Anything he does that could remotely be considered heroic happens either by accident or through sheer dumb luck. Here is a horror protagonist who doesn’t make stupid decisions because the plot demands it. No, Bryan makes stupid decisions because he, himself, is a moron, an immature buffoon having the worst day of his life. In his obliviousness and incompetence, Bryan is a spiritual continuation of actor Austin Abrams’ character in Zach Cregger’s previous film, “Weapons,” an immature delinquent who just happens to find himself bumbling through evil he isn’t even a little capable of understanding.

Zach Cregger and Austin Abrams have found in each other a kindred spirit, a perfect creative synergy of merging horror and comedy. As much as Cregger delights in tormenting his star, Abrams delights in being tormented, committing himself fully to the performance as a perpetual ne’er-do-well replete with high-pitched screams, slapstick physical comedy, and motor-mouth profanity as he struggles to comprehend the madness he encounters.

While foregoing adapting any of the plots from the “Resident Evil” video game franchise in favor of an original story set in that universe, Cregger still enjoys the tropes and rhythms of video game storytelling. The opening ten minutes might as well be a tutorial as the audience learns the rules of the world alongside Bryan, and from there we are taken on a relentless story as Bryan collects loot along the way with constantly escalating stakes, each turn in the story both horrible yet inevitable. Bryan flees a farmhouse only to find himself in a pitch black tunnel, flees a terrifying city street for an even more terrifying sewer. As the locations become more horrifying, so to do the monsters and the weapons Bryan finds along the way.

Unlike Cregger’s previous films, “Resident Evil” relies more on CGI-heavy action to ramp up the intensity and the tone perhaps leans more into the comedy than the horror, which, along with an abrupt ending, may alienate some viewers, but the story delivers absolute thrills like few others can, achieving horror-comedy bliss despite any potential nitpicks.

Resident Evil
Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout.
Running Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Director Zach Cregger
Writers Zach Cregger, Shay Hatten
Stars Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser
Rating R
Running Time 90 Minutes
Genres Action, Horror, Sci-Fi