Resident Evil isn’t a film franchise that I get too excited about. I liked the first film okay, but I got tired of the hyper-stylized sequels early on and only recently revisited them to finish the series, and I still haven’t watched 2021’s Welcome to Raccoon City. In other words, the franchise itself was not the draw when this new film was announced; writer/director Zach Cregger was.
I loved Cregger’s first two films, Barbarian and Weapons, so I knew this new Resident Evil would likely have a few disturbing moments and plenty of humor throughout. Where it differs from his previous work is the pacing. His first two films have flashbacks and disjointed timelines, but Resident Evil is very much a video game movie in that it is always moving forward with clear objectives.
As a bigger fan of the Resident Evil games than the films, this new movie excited me. But I am not a superfan by any means. I’ve only played a handful of the games. That actually puts me in the sweet spot for this movie because I don’t care that there are no video game characters included in this film, but I know enough of the game to understand a few Easter eggs scattered throughout. Anyone expecting a straight up adaptation of any storyline from any game in the series will be disappointed.
Anyone expecting a straight up horror movie will be disappointed, too. Resident Evil, despite being a part of the zombie genre, is much more a monster movie than a zombie film. Yes, the dead come back to life, but early on we get some gnarly, nightmarish creatures. This leads to plenty of creepy moments, especially since the film takes place entirely at night and features locales like abandoned farms, tunnels, sewers, etc. Everything is there for this to be both a standard horror movie and adaptation, but it’s great because it’s neither of those things.
First, there are enough zombie movies and TV shows already, so even if this was a good one, it would still be a little boring. This is why leaning into the franchise’s more monstrous-type of enemies is a good move. As for the adaptation aspect, that’s been tried before both with the Paul W.S. Anderson series in which they shoe-horned in characters like Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong to mediocre effect. And the attempt to make an extremely faithful adaptation with Welcome to Raccoon City was largely ignored, so why try that again so soon?
But Resident Evil is still a video game movie, which is a genre that has been notoriously tricky to adapt. Video games are inherently silly, and Cregger’s film plays into that. There may not be specific plotlines or characters from the games in this film, but plenty of other video games elements are present. The games have clear boundaries you cannot pass, and the film hilariously portrays that with the use of different padlocks. In a running gag, the main character, Bryan (an excellently bumbling Austin Abrams), tries to shoot padlocks to no effect. This is one of those silly game moments. Often, especially in older games, simple things like locks and fences are nonsensically impossible to get past, so it was nice to see that element in the film.
More than that, Bryan serves as a surrogate for the gamer audience. He levels up throughout the movie, getting better weapons and getting better at handling increasingly insane situations. From a movie standpoint, he will appear very stupid, and audiences will likely be talking to the screen asking, “Why are you doing that?” But from a game perspective, we know he has to. Being even a casual gamer isn’t a requirement to enjoy this film, but it certainly helped in my case, and I definitely felt seen when Abrams proclaimed, “Yeah! Video games!” after a triumphant moment.
Because of this, Resident Evil, like most video games, is more about the experience than the plot or character development. The plot isn’t an issue, as simple is sometimes better, especially in a video game adaptation. Bryan is a medical courier who needs to get something to a hospital, and zombies and creatures are in his way. No need for superfluous mythology. As for character, there are little elements, such as Bryan having fears of becoming a parent. But the film doesn’t have time to get too bogged down with it (and there is one gross sequence that amplifies that fear). It’s more important that Bryan is simply likable enough that we want to see him succeed, and Abrams handles that seemingly effortlessly. Sure, Bryan does plenty of stuff the audience might find stupid, but he never becomes one of those horror characters that you want to see bad things happen to.
There were a lot of ways this film could go wrong, but Zach Cregger found a way to walk that fine line between grisly and funny, which is exactly what a series like Resident Evil needed.
Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)
When I saw that first padlock, I knew even driving through it wouldn’t break it, and I also knew that the padlock at the hospital could be taken out with a gun. These are things that you just know from playing video games.
As a fan of Blank Check with Griffin and David, it was great to see Griffin Newman in the lab scene along with Zach Cherry, who has been a guest on the podcast multiple times. They’re currently doing the Resident Evil movies on Patreon, but Newman hadn’t revealed he was in the movie until the most recent episode covering Retribution. The crazy thing for me is that I almost had his part spoiled for me. I was ready to listen to the Retribution episode, but I had another podcast to finish first, so I didn’t get to start it until on the way home from watching this movie. I was minutes away from having that surprise ruined for me.
As for that ending, I did find it a bit of a missed opportunity. I know Cregger is done with any Whitest Kids U Know stuff after Trevor Moore died, and aside from a tray of hot dogs in Weapons that might or might not be a reference to the show, he hasn’t included any of the remaining cast in his films. But how great would it have been if the rest of the WKUK guys, including Cregger (who did the voice on the intercom), had been the fuck-up scientists on the top floor along with Cherry and Newman. It would have been distracting as fuck, but seeing all those dudes in lab coats fucking up a cure to save the world would have been great.
As I stated above, I’m not a super fan of the games, having only played a handful. But I did still notice some obvious references like the healing sprays in the barn, the typewriter in the farmhouse, the way the alleys were like a closed off maze, and the emphasis on keeping track of ammo. I’m sure there are plenty more, but nothing felt too silly or forced to me, which is the most important thing.
I’ve seen some people compare this to a John Carpenter movie, and I kind of agree. Cregger certainly likes this genre, and he’s talked about not venturing too far out of it.
As much as I liked Bryan, I was glad he didn’t get the antidote at the end. First off, there just can’t be a happy ending after everything that happened. And how would that have worked, anyway? He had eaten and morphed with five or six people at that point. What happens to them? And how does he live with that if the antidote works? Better to stay a monster.
Bryan’s realization that he wants to have a child with his girlfriend (which he only realizes as he’s conveniently about to transform into a monster) made me worry he was going to be okay at the end of the film, which would have sucked because then this would have turned into some metaphor for growing up and becoming a parent or some shit. Fuck that. I don’t need every horror movie to be a metaphor for shit. Sometimes it can just be a fun horror movie.
That written, there is still plenty of parenthood fear shit going on here, but it’s pretty blatant. I mean, a crazy long-armed monster baby gets a thirty second reveal in a maternity ward that Bryan is forced to enter. That’s not exactly subtext. But I did love that he immediately killed it as if to say, “This isn’t about parenthood. That’s a fucked up monster baby, and it needs to die.”
I always enjoy the title popping up fifteen plus minutes in a movie.
I don’t want to dwell on this, but I saw so much bitching online about this not being like the games enough. I’m sure a lot of it is clickbait garbage, but there are also real people that probably feel this way. To them, I say, “What the fuck?” If you wanted more of the Paul W.S. Anderson shit, then just rewatch those. There’s no need to replicate that. And if you want more of a straightforward adaptation, there’s the Raccoon City movie or all the animated movies. What else was there to try with this series than this? And not to mention, Cregger has said he’s done with it, but you know the studio isn’t. There will be sequels, and the world is not established to allow video game characters to be introduced. And guess what, it’ll probably fucking suck. I just can’t imagine being a fan of this series and being upset with this film when so many other iterations already exist. You always have the option to pick and choose which movies and shows you watch. Maybe skip this one if you just want to see one of the games faithfully recreated.
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