Resident Evil Review: Zach Cregger Delivers a Bloody, Chaotic Horror Ride

Few horror protagonists have been as oblivious to a zombie apocalypse — or as hopelessly unprepared to survive one — as Austin Abrams’ Bryan in “Resident Evil.” Like Simon Pegg’s slacker in “Shaun of the Dead,” Bryan is far more concerned with completing an ordinary errand than recognizing the catastrophe unfolding around him. After accepting a last-minute job to deliver a top-secret package to a medical facility in the isolated mountain town of Raccoon City, the gig worker ignores every warning sign because he needs to get paid. His car is completely unsuited to the icy roads, but he presses on anyway. Along the way, he even picks up an elderly woman who crashed into his vehicle, carefully securing her in the passenger seat so he can take her to the hospital.

Video game adaptations have struggled for decades, but director Zach Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten may have landed on the solution that has been obvious all along: stop following heroes who execute every mission perfectly. Instead, “Resident Evil” follows someone who behaves as though he is being controlled by a player making the worst possible choices. Though Cregger occasionally borrows the look of a first-person shooter, the film is more closely aligned with choice-driven horror games such as “Until Dawn,” where a seemingly minor decision can determine who makes it to the end.

This is the playthrough in which common sense is abandoned at every opportunity. Bryan enters rooms he should avoid, offers help to infected people he ought to leave behind and ignores clear instructions whenever doing so appears faster or easier. The result is a constantly escalating combination of anxiety and absurdity — a film that is just as amusing as it is nerve-racking.

Cregger’s “Resident Evil” is deliberately low-concept. It is not a direct adaptation of any one game in the series and does not center on recognizable fan-favorite characters, though longtime players will spot Easter eggs. The enthusiastic reaction to a typewriter during my screening offered a clear example. Following Abrams’ memorable turn as the hapless burglar James in “Weapons,” which Looper also reviewed, Cregger builds an entire horror adventure around the actor’s talent for stumbling into danger without realizing what kind of story he is in. An extended sequence in which Bryan breaks into a family home on the way to Raccoon City feels like a longer, fully developed version of the idea introduced in that earlier film.

Cregger clearly recognizes Abrams as a comic performer who is at his best when pressure pushes him past the point of reason. He has effectively built a franchise-scale horror movie around the slapstick possibilities of throwing the actor into rooms packed with undead creatures. The instinct that this setup would be funny without radically altering the genre formula proves correct almost immediately.

Abrams extends the loose, unpredictable physicality of his previous work with Cregger, moving as if Bryan is being operated by someone who has never learned to use a PlayStation controller. Although Cregger is associated with horror and the film includes grotesque transformations and mounting tension, “Resident Evil” is better understood as a horror comedy. Every jump scare is engineered for a laugh. We know Bryan is approaching places he should flee from, so the pauses and silences feel less like sustained dread than a deliberate setup for the next punchline.

The film occasionally asks viewers to connect with Bryan on an emotional level. As in another recent video game adaptation, “Exit 8,” his nightmare begins around the moment he learns that his girlfriend is pregnant. Yet those scenes struggle to register because the story’s momentum is built to keep moving rather than pause for reflection. Bryan works much better as the avatar of the least capable gamer imaginable, producing vocal reactions to danger so strange and spectacular that they seem beyond the limits of human expression.

Following “Barbarian” and “Weapons,” two ambitious, multi-threaded films that expanded beyond their horror-comedy descriptions, “Resident Evil” feels like a revealing change of pace for Cregger. At 95 minutes, it is tightly constructed with barely a wasted moment. Bryan’s emotional journey is underdeveloped, but the film still demonstrates that Cregger can create direct, visceral thrills without losing the darkly comic sensibility that defines his work. Even as a potential studio assignment, it opens the door to a different side of his filmmaking.

Whether “Resident Evil” ultimately deserves the title of greatest video game movie ever made remains to be seen. The competition is limited enough that the debate can wait, especially after only one viewing. What is already clear is that Cregger has created one of the most convincing cinematic translations of the experience of playing a video game. The characters are not simply completing a series of tasks to unlock the next level; instead, the film recreates the panic of having seconds to decide how to overcome a terrifying obstacle. Unlike Paul W.S. Anderson’s adaptations, it has little interest in stopping to explain the mythology. This is a kinetic ride designed to move faster than the audience can dwell on the bigger picture.

Anyone who has played these games knows the pain of making a tactical mistake that gets an important character killed. “Resident Evil” turns that worst-case scenario into an entire apocalyptic narrative. Survival depends as much on instinct as planning or skill, and Bryan — who admits he is “bad at guns” — is an extraordinarily unlikely savior for humanity. He makes Ash from the “Evil Dead” films look like the action hero he always believed himself to be. Watching Bryan blunder from one crisis to the next is an exhilarating, relentlessly entertaining experience.

“Resident Evil” lands in theaters on September 18.