The Resident Evil film franchise has been rebooted with Zach Cregger directing, who has taken the film in a very different direction. So will it please both long-time fans and those who assume the Umbrella Corporation makes parasols?
The Plot
Courier Bryan is talked into delivering another package at the end of a long day for double-pay instead of going home to talk to his partner about a big issue in their relationship. Bryan is a courier for hospitals and can sometimes deliver organs needed for transplant and the importance of getting this package to the location safely and quickly is made very clear. As Bryan drives towards Raccoon City, with the wintry conditions getting worse, he gets in a rather bizarre car accident, and things deteriorate sharply from there.
The film stars Austin Abrams as Bryan and the story follows him for the entire film. Abrams was in Cregger’s last film, the brilliant Weapons, playing James, the camped out sometime criminal who arguably solved the whole mystery. The rest of the cast rarely stays on screen for more than a few minutes, a memorable performance is given by Paul Walter Hauser; playing the classic weaselly cowardly company man always volunteering someone else for the dangerous job. Abrams is fantastic at encapsulating the person just trying to do his job, get on with his day, when all this stuff keeps happening and getting in the way.
The film is directed by Zach Cregger, coming off huge successes like Weapons and Barbarian, and it was a surprising move for him to make a franchise movie. Indeed Cregger has insisted this will be the only franchise movie he will ever make, preferring the increased creative control he has had in his other projects. Franchise or not Cregger has made a very good film, managing to combine small contained tense scenes with huge spectacle.
Does It Work?
Resident Evil is a really, really good film. Far better than a new Resident Evil film has any right to be. The franchise produced seven films over the space of around twenty years, Resident Evil (2001) was quite good and after that to paraphrase the description of Bryan’s journey, things deteriorated quickly. Zach Cregger is a director on a roll with Barbarian and Weapons being successful with audiences and critics, and it seemed from the beginning he wanted to do something different with Resident Evil.
The story exclusively follows Bryan who gives an excellent lesson on how to avoid dealing with personal problems by running into a zombie apocalypse. Bryan is tasked with delivering a package to Raccoon City General Hospital, going into the almost snowbound wilderness. Things start slowly and Bryan shows an admirable commitment to trying to help people and actually complete the job (repeatedly stressing how what he is delivering could be a liver or a heart). When the horror truly starts Bryan rushes to a rural farmhouse where things just worse. Bryan is refreshingly not terribly good at this life, struggling to jump fences, throwing away a ladder and then realising a moment later he needed it, and not knowing how to use guns. The second half takes on a far bigger scale with Bryan reaching the city and then all bets are off on what just might happen. The film has several sequences of spectacular brutality and jaw-dropping audacity, with one scene being particularly memorable for the awful creepiness of it.
Will Fans Like It?
There has been discussion of how much is this a Resident Evil film? It is not based on any one game, Bryan is not a character from the game, for most of the film the Umbrella Corporation (the evil company that is ever present in the video game series) is completely absent. There are a number of small nods to the games, such as simple padlocks that are impervious to damage, a typewriter set up in one room, repeated appearances of ‘green herbs’ but it is not particularly invested in the storytelling of the games. This is a good thing for all concerned. Whilst games may have great storytelling they are not stories, they are…games, to adapt a video game into a movie or TV show you have to change the nature of it, take inspiration from the world, the lore, the aesthetics, but make a new story.
Rating 
(3.5 / 5)
Resident Evil is an enjoyable and solid action-survival-horror, the first half feeling especially tense and original.
