A hapless courier is tasked with delivering a package to a remote hospital. He soon finds himself caught in the middle of an outbreak and must fight through hordes of mutated creatures to survive.
Full disclosure. I have never seen a ‘Resident Evil’ movie before, nor have I played the games (though I am loosely familiar with them), so I suspect I’m in a minority of people who will choose to go and see this latest film (which from a quick check, is the 8th movie in the series). The reasons I’ve chosen to take the plunge on this particular entry is largely down to director Zach Cregger, who has rightly gained plaudits for his last two films (‘Barbarian’ and ‘Weapons’), and initial positive reviews (certainly not a given for a video game adaptation).
In terms of the plot for ‘Resident Evil’, we spend a sleek 90 minutes following a medical courier, Bryan (Austin Abrams), who has to take a mysterious, important package to Raccoon City General Hospital high up in the Colorado Mountains. En route, he accidentally hits a woman crossing the road, setting in course a chain of events that will be familiar to anyone who knows the series or zombie movies in general.
There’s quite a few things I liked about this film, starting with how closely it hews both to video game logic and the ‘cinematic’ shooting style of a video game. I can’t speak for how closely it hews directly to ‘Resident Evil’, but you don’t need to be a big gamer to recognise things like picking up weapons and bullets, navigating seemingly impassable paths and having to shoot out padlocks to open doors/gates. Cregger has mentioned he is a fan of the video games and that affection comes through in how this is crafted. I also liked Abrams central performance, as a bit of a slacker who things happen to, but he keeps powering on his mission regardless of the chaos surrounding him. His comedic nonchalance to the new reality of hybrid monster zombies is also quite funny. It also benefits from its short runtime, which helps it maintain a propulsive forward momentum and avoids becoming bogged down in subplots.
From a more critical standpoint, it’s not particularly frightening or creepy beyond a couple of jump scares, and I say this as someone who is quite easy to scare in a movie, and the ending was a bit predictable for my liking. That said, for a 90 minute video game adaptation, ‘this ‘Resident Evil‘ was a lot of fun, well directed with a good lead performance, and I did enjoy it a lot.
Rating: 4/5
Directed By: Zach Cregger
Starring: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser
