Spoiler-light. I'm keeping plot specifics out of this so nobody gets anything spoiled going in.
I went into this one with high expectations and a little bit of fear, which is a weird combo. Zach Cregger is a director I'm a big fan of. I liked Barbarian a lot and I liked Weapons a lot, so I expected this to be really well made.
The fear came from the game fan in me. I'm a big Resident Evil game fan. I'm not a fan of the Milla Jovovich movies. And this one isn't based directly on any of the games. It's Cregger's own take, and as a greedy gamer, I wanted to see the Resident Evil I know. But the more I heard him talk about how he was putting it together, the more I could tell he's a real fan, and that got me excited again. It also helped that friends of mine whose opinions I trust, on movies and on the games, seemed to enjoy it a lot. So I sat down in the theater and watched it.
I think this one is going to split people, or it already has. It's not one for one. It's not Resident Evil the way you know it. Keep that in mind, because it's the whole movie.
It gets going right away. Cregger wastes no time, and the movie only runs about 90 minutes. I love that. No bloated runtime. You're in, you get the vibe, and you're out.
You follow Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, a medical courier. His job is getting hearts and lungs and other transplant deliveries between hospitals fast. He's on one of those runs when he gets offered double pay to bring something else to Raccoon City General, and he takes it. Double pay was a mistake. Meanwhile his girlfriend is going through some things, and he's trying to talk to her while he's working. Then on the way he hits somebody, and here come the zombies and the mutated things. That's all I'm saying.
This is where it won me over. It feels like playing a Resident Evil game. A lot of the shots are right over his shoulder, which I loved, especially once you get indoors. The camera stays close to him, so you can't see much around you, and every corner and hallway gets stressful. You feel like you're the guy on screen.
It also feels like moving through a game level by level. You start somewhere with few or no enemies, then a few show up, and the setting keeps changing. You go from driving, to a small cabin, to tunnels, hospitals, sewers. Every new place feels like the next level, and I loved that.
You get the little game things too. If you play Resident Evil, you know you're always hunting for stuff, and there's plenty of that here. You start with a handgun and your weapons keep getting better, and there's a story reason for each new one. There are Easter eggs all over the place. Little gags you'll catch if you know how to get through a door in these games, and what works on a door and what doesn't. If you know, you know. The sound helps too. The long quiet stretches and the sudden gross noises felt like they came right out of a playthrough.
Think about it like this. If you, the player, got dropped into Raccoon City, you're not super soldier Chris and you're not super cop Leon. You're a regular guy, and Bryan is really regular. There's nothing special about him. He's kind of a dummy.
Austin Abrams plays that great. If you like silliness you're going to get it, but there's more to him than that. He's an ordinary guy in over his head. He's not good with any of the weapons he picks up, and everything happens in real time. He can't just roundhouse kick a mutant like Leon Kennedy, and that's why the scares work.
Because of that, it plays like a really good dark comedy. There's a lot of funny in this movie, and you can tell Cregger is making jokes out of how in over his head Bryan is. It's not witty Marvel quips. It's a guy panicking and trying to figure out how a gun works while something horrifying walks toward him. I wasn't sold on that at first, but it fit. For the most part I enjoyed it. Some of the jokes don't hit, but a lot of them do.
Most of the scares are jump scares, same as playing the game. You get a lot of them. The zombies and the creatures are Cregger's own twist. They all have some feel from the games, but they're not quite the same, and I don't mind that.
There's also a stalker type enemy that's its own thing here, which is a great touch. If you dig into the game lore, you've got Mr. X in Resident Evil 2 and Nemesis in Resident Evil 3, enemies that are always there trying to get you. Now picture that monster on your heels, except you're not a trained cop, you're a clueless delivery guy. That hits different.
I liked all of his versions of the monsters. They're different, but they belong in this world. We also finally see what Bryan is transporting to Raccoon City General, and that's a fun nod to the games.
The ending is a super cool, sick nod to the games, especially the design of what we see. I don't know how people are going to feel about it, but I enjoyed it a lot.
I really want to nail this down. It's its own story set in the world of Resident Evil, and you don't need to play the games to enjoy it. You'll probably get a little more out of it because of all the little things you see here and there, but you're not missing anything if you haven't played them.
As far as movies based on video games go, and this isn't a direct one, it's inspired by the world and it uses the names and the setting, this is a great one. You can tell they understand the world they're in. I recommend it fully to game fans, horror fans, and everybody else. I think this is a really good movie.
Straight Heat.