Resident Evil (2026) Review: Zach Cregger delivers a franchise best with trademark horror-humor blend

Zach Cregger’s mix of horror, humor, gore and just enough reverence for the games turns Resident Evil into one of the best video game adaptations to date. Austin Abrams delivers a winning performance as a medical courier whose seemingly ordinary day descends into a nightmarish hellscape. The first two acts are sublime, but the third veers too far into absurdity, culminating in a flat ending. Still, Abrams’ performance and Cregger’s assured direction make this easily the strongest Resident Evil adaptation yet.

Resident Evil Overview

Resident Evil is Abrams’ movie. He plays Brian, a medical courier whose seemingly routine day quickly spirals into something far more sinister. Abrams is in virtually every frame, making Brian the audience’s guide through a nightmare that only grows more dangerous and bizarre as the film progresses.

It’s a smart choice by director Zach Cregger, who co-wrote the screenplay with Shay Hatten. Rather than building the movie around one of the games’ established heroes, Cregger tells an original story through the eyes of an ordinary person completely unprepared for what awaits him. Brian isn’t a cop, soldier or hardened survivor. He’s simply trying to stay alive. Abrams makes his fear, confusion and at times humorous reactions feel authentic even as Cregger pushes the story into more outrageous territory.

Abrams also proves particularly well suited to Cregger’s blend of horror and comedy. After working together on Weapons, the two have an established rhythm that pays off even more here. Abrams can generate laughs without undercutting the danger surrounding Brian, while his increasingly frantic performance helps maintain the movie’s relentless momentum. Abrams delivers a masterclass in exasperation.

That momentum is aided by a remarkably tight 90-minute runtime. Resident Evil wastes little time getting Brian into trouble and rarely gives him a chance to recover once things go wrong. Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis and Zach Cherry round out the cast, but this remains Abrams’ journey from beginning to end. Those additional cast members throw the movie off its tonal axis in the movie’s later stages.

By keeping the focus almost entirely on a single vulnerable protagonist, Cregger strips Resident Evil down to its most essential ingredient: survival.

Survival Horror

Cregger’s greatest accomplishment is how well he captures the survival-horror experience of Resident Evil without simply recreating a specific game. Brian frequently finds himself trapped in confined spaces with limited resources, forcing him to find a way out while something far more dangerous lurks nearby. Ammunition is scarce; every encounter carries consequences and running away is often a better option than fighting. A scene involving different sets of keys, a truck, a padlocked gate, and a creature chasing after him absolutely evokes the sensation of playing a Resident Evil game without anything being a direct correlation.

It helps that Brian is terrible with a gun. He isn’t suddenly transformed into an action hero once the shooting starts. His handling of firearms is clumsy and panicked, and Cregger uses that inexperience for both tension and humor. Giving Brian a weapon doesn’t necessarily make him safer. Sometimes, it just gives him another way to make an already terrible situation worse.

Cregger also borrows from the visual language of the games. Certain sequences position the camera behind Brian to evoke the third-person perspective of the modern remakes, while others shift into a first-person viewpoint that puts the audience directly in his shoes. These flourishes never feel like empty Easter eggs. They complement a movie already structured around problem-solving and survival.

Then there’s the gore. Cregger embraces the grotesque possibilities of Resident Evil, delivering gruesome creature encounters and bursts of violence that underscore Brian’s continued vulnerability. The bloodshed can be excessive and occasionally funny, but the threat underneath it rarely disappears.

More than any familiar monster or reference, these details show Cregger understands what elements he needs from Resident Evil to make his story work.

Raccoon City

The inevitable arrival in Raccoon City should be where Resident Evil kicks into another gear. Instead, it marks the point at which Cregger begins to lose his grip on the tone that makes the first two acts so effective. The movie gets bigger, louder and considerably more absurd, but not necessarily better.

This is also where the rest of the ensemble finally comes into play. Hauser and Cherry bring plenty of comedic energy, but their arrival changes the dynamic considerably. Until this point, the humor largely comes from Brian’s reactions to increasingly horrifying circumstances. Once Hauser and Cherry enter the picture, the comedy becomes broader and more pronounced, occasionally working against the tension Cregger spent most of the movie carefully building.

There is still plenty to appreciate once the action reaches Raccoon City. Seeing Cregger unleash the larger Resident Evil world after spending so much time keeping Brian confined gives the movie a welcome sense of scale. The gore remains plentiful, the chaos escalates and Abrams continues to anchor the increasingly ridiculous circumstances around him.

The problem is that the movie starts drifting away from what it does best. Brian’s vulnerability and isolation made the earlier sequences unpredictable because survival never felt guaranteed. Surrounding him with more characters and pushing the action toward spectacle diminishes some of that dread.

Cregger ultimately pushes the absurdity too far, particularly with an ending that doesn’t land as well as everything preceding it. It’s a disappointing final note for a movie that spends most of its lean runtime demonstrating such a strong understanding of Resident Evil. Fortunately, the stumble comes late enough that it doesn’t erase just how effective the journey to Raccoon City is.

Resident Evil Final Thoughts

After decades of uneven attempts to bring Resident Evil to the big screen, Cregger finally finds a formula that works. He understands that capturing the spirit of the games matters more than faithfully recreating their stories, allowing him to make something recognizable without being beholden to what came before.

The result is a movie that feels distinctly like Cregger while still belonging in the Resident Evil universe. His willingness to take risks doesn’t always pay off, especially as the film approaches its conclusion, but there is an energy and confidence behind his direction that keeps the missteps from overwhelming everything that works.

At the center of it all is Abrams. Asking one actor to carry virtually an entire movie is a gamble. Abrams more than rewards Cregger’s confidence in him. Whether terrified, frustrated or completely exhausted by the insanity surrounding him, Abrams makes Brian someone worth following into hell and back.

Resident Evil may stumble across the finish line, but the journey getting there is tense, gruesome, funny and wildly entertaining. Cregger has finally demonstrated how much cinematic potential remains in this franchise when a filmmaker is willing to approach it from a different direction. It’s not quite the masterpiece its first two acts suggest it could become, but it’s easily the best Resident Evil movie yet.