RESIDENT EVIL – Rebooting a Zombie Franchise That Won’t Stay Dead!

RESIDENT EVIL is directed by Zach Cregger. The film stars Austin Abrams, with supporting parts from Zach Cherry, Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Johnno Wilson.

Bryan is a medical delivery driver. Ready for his shift to be over for the night, he reluctantly takes another job, but quickly finds himself in over his head when he discovers humans and animals behaving strangely. It isn’t long before he finds himself on the road and in over his head, with rampaging creatures wreaking havoc everywhere. Will the awkward and confused young man rise up and be a hero… or will he fall victim to the spreading plague?

RESIDENT EVIL, based on a zombie killing game franchise Capcom introduced in the mid 1990s, has received more live action film adaptations than any video game series in history. The movies themselves don’t have the best reputation, but they’ve been fun “popcorn movies” that always make a ton of money. Did they get everything from the source material right? No, but they at least understood who the central players were, and to a lesser extent, the tone the material should carry.

This latest live action cinematic take on RESIDENT EVIL (itself the second time the series has been rebooted for the big screen) tries, as Monty Python once so eloquently put it, something completely different. This time around it’s largely a one-man show, focusing on a single character and his journey and everything that goes wrong along the way. Director Zach Cregger has been making a name for himself in recent years with films like BARBARIAN and WEAPONS…

…and his latest movie left me with a big question mark over my head. What we get here is a paranormal suspense horror flick with a combination of violence and wit in equal quantities. But this is RESIDENT EVIL in name only, and it makes me wonder by Cregger didn’t simply develop this as an independent film that didn’t carry the name of that franchise. You could make a parody of a RESIDENT EVIL film, and likely end up with the same movie I saw on the screen.

I’ll give the movie credit where credit is due. Leading man Austin Abrams actually does a good job with the material he’s given. He’s a clueless and lost soul who’s never wielded a gun or been in a life-or-death situation before. He’s got girlfriend problems. He hates his job but won’t shy away from making more money if the job presents itself. Truth be told, this guy is great. He more or less behaves exactly the way a real-world person thrust into this situation would. And he basically survives despite his dimwittedness because of plot armor. The monster effects and violence certainly help the movie to earn its R rating.

But this is where things start to get messy. Did the execs at Sony/Columbia/Tristar forget that they were supposed to be making the new RESIDENT EVIL movie and not a third ZOMBIELAND flick? The tone and style of humor present here couldn’t be more out of place in what’s supposed to be an adaptation of one of video gaming’s most revered franchises. The older RESIDENT EVIL movies, including the first one in 2002 directed by Paul WS Anderson (who’d previously helmed the 1995 MORTAL KOMBAT flick) at least understood the “survival horror” theme of the games, and introduced many of the series’ classic characters to the big screen, along with an awesome original heroine character in the form of Milla Jovovich’s Alice. By comparison, I’m not quite sure what this new adaptation is supposed to be. The ending (no spoilers here) seems to leave the door open for sequels, but do we really want one if it’s going to retain this humorous tone and none of the classic characters from the games?

I have no problem with video game-based movies taking liberties with their source material, but I do have a problem when what I’m viewing is so far removed and seems to miss the point entirely. There are supernatural elements and creatures, Raccoon City, and the Umbrella Corporation (with one of its reps played by a criminally underused Paul Walter Hauser), but if you removed these names, no one would know this was a RESIDENT EVIL movie. Which makes me ponder the question: Why didn’t the director and the studio simply develop this as a standalone entity? Was it because they thought the RESIDENT EVIL name would sell?

To my surprise, many of my fellow critics have been singing the praises of this new take on RESIDENT EVIL, seeing it as a worthy addition to Cregger’s growing filmography. I’m not purely a critic or purely a game purist; I’d say I’m somewhere in the middle. And despite a great performance from Austin Abrams and some fantastic moments of action violence, I feel like this flick just missed the point of RESIDENT EVIL altogether, with very little outside of a few verbal references feeling like it came from the games. I’m still confused about what I just watched. Wait for this one to hit the streaming services.