Resident Evil by Zach Cregger (2026)

Written by Harry Gersbach

In 2025, I binged most of the Resident Evil games (for those who care, I played the remakes of 1-4, 5-8, and both Revelations titles), and it quickly became my favourite video game series. A film adaptation directed and co-written by Zach Cregger had already been announced at this point, and as a fan of Barbarian, that news had me intrigued. By the time Weapons (which I enjoyed even more) came out, I was all in on this guy adapting the series.

Capcom’s flagship survival horror franchise has a weird history of live-action adaptations. I’ve only seen the first three Milla Jovovich vehicles, but I’ll quickly sum them up here: the first one is a solid, fun nu-metal action-horror that does some cool things with concepts from the games, the second one feels like a fever dream you’d have after playing too much Resident Evil 3, and the third one is inexplicably set in a Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic wasteland and has a character called Kmart in it. Then there’s Johannes Roberts’ Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City from 2021, a film which seemed to think stuffing itself with as many characters, plot beats, and references from the games as it could was enough to make it a good movie (it wasn’t). Oh, there was also a Netflix series, and I think I speak for everyone when I say this: I haven’t seen a single second of it (although I can’t say Lance Reddick as Wesker doesn’t intrigue me).

Now that brings us to 2026, a big year for Resident Evil. It’s the 30^th anniversary of the franchise, fan-favourite character Leon S. Kennedy is back by popular demand in Resident Evil: Requiem, the fantastic ninth mainline instalment of the games (or tenth if we’re counting RE:0?), and of course, a brand-new movie is out—the first to simply be titled “Resident Evil” since 2002.

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is a blast. It’s a horror-action-comedy whose horror, action, and comedy elements never feel compromised by one another. A worse actor could’ve easily caused the whole thing to fall apart considering how intimate and integral the lead performance is, but Austin Abrams is an absolute star. There’s truly no one else I’d rather watch mumble, grumble, and stumble through the T-Virus outbreak than Abrams’ adorkable medical courier character, Bryan. Structurally, the film gradually builds from suspenseful to chaotic in a super satisfying way, while still leaving room for some great character moments along the way. Oddly, the film didn’t remind me of other horror movies, but it did make me think about the Coen brothers—something about the darkness of its humour and the clumsiness of its brutality reminded me of Blood Simple, and even a bit of No Country for Old Men. Maybe if the Coens reunited to give us a horror flick, it’d feel something like this.

I can’t write about this film without bringing up the reactions it garnered from certain members of the Resident Evil fandom. It’s something I’d rather not dwell on for the sake of my own mental health, but seeing as I’m writing this as a representative of the fanbase, I should probably address it. You don’t have to scroll far through Reddit to see comments calling Zach Cregger a hack, a terrible filmmaker, or a LARPer who’s never played the games. “This movie’s nothing like Resident Evil,” they say, but I guarantee that if instead of a movie, this was released as a game with the exact same characters, enemies, plot, and set pieces, these same people would say it’s too similar to the other games. They complain about their favourite characters like Leon and Chris not being in the movie, but it’s impossible to imagine them being satisfied with the casting if they were. There’s just no pleasing these people, and it’s probably for the best that we ignore them.

How do I feel about this film as an adaptation of my favourite video game series, though? I think it’s ingenious. The games have a pretty standardised formula, and Cregger decides to use this formula while also doing his own thing with it. Without getting too spoiler-y, tropes that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s played the games such as the protagonist reaching the Umbrella laboratory and a climactic boss fight with a heavily mutated infected character are present but turned on their heads in interesting ways. Though the political themes may not be as pronounced as I’d like them to be, the critiques of capitalism and corporations that the games are known for are present too.

Historically, video game movies, especially those that are targeted towards adults, have frequently been ashamed to be based on video games. Everything considered “too video game-y" is thrown out the window during adaptation. I get that they’re different mediums, but where’s the fun in not making your video game movie at least somewhat video-gamey? The Uncharted movie is a victim of this—the whole appeal of those games is that they’re essentially adventure movies à la Indiana Jones that you get to play, so when they get sent through the typical game-to-film adaptation pipeline, what we are left with is a bland adventure movie with no personality.

Cregger understands this. In this film, Bryan finds a shotgun in a house, then proceeds to rifle through every drawer in the vicinity looking for ammo, just like you have to do when you play the games. He sits in the back of a car listening to another character’s expository monologue, in a scene that’s essentially the live-action version of an un-skippable cutscene that plays while the next environment loads. There are locations that are clearly inspired by video game level design, there’s some cool first-person shots, the list goes on. Bryan himself is textually a gamer, too—his firearm skills (or lack thereof) come from his experience playing shooters, and he even uses the phrase “video games!” as a battle cry after defeating a certain enemy.

I don’t think there’s ever been a movie to encapsulate the feeling of playing a video game, to embrace video game logic, and to translate the essence of a specific video game series to the screen as successfully as this film does. In fact, I’m willing to crown it as the quintessential video game movie. That’s right, eat your heart out, A Minecraft Movie!

Despite my praise, when looking at Cregger’s filmography, this may be his weakest film so far. It’s only by a small margin though, and I don’t think by any means this is the start of some kind of downward trajectory for him (and commercially speaking it’s already proven to be the opposite). To use a video game term, I see this movie as a side-quest, something he wanted to get out of his system before continuing to focus on original ideas. To use a music term, it reminds me of the mixtape era of hip-hop music, when in-between studio albums, rappers would drop mixtapes which often consisted of them freestyling over other people’s beats. This feels like Cregger’s mixtape—a fun riff on source material he's a fan of, but not quite on the same level as his last two efforts.

While we’re already eight movies in, there’s still plenty of water to draw from the Resident Evil well, and if it’s true that Constantin Film has to make a new adaptation every five years to retain the rights, then we’ll likely be getting another one of these pretty soon whether we like it or not. If they’re anything like this, though, then I think we’re in good hands.

Resident Evil is screening at most cinemas in Sydney

Pick of the Week
This week, I suggest you go see The Runner at the Sydney Cinematheque on Wednesday. One of the first post-revolution films from Iran to break through to the world, the film brings poeticism to childhood. Tickets are free and available here.

New Releases - THURSDAY 8 October

• Lomu (Gavin Fitzgerald, Vea Mafile'o)
• The Social Reckoning (Aaron Sorkin)
• Other Mommy (Rob Savage)