★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
Check the photo: that’s director Zach Cregger—yup, the dude who put the doomsday in “Weapons” and “Barbarian”—with actor up-and-comer Austin Abrams, the star of “Resident Evil.” Don’t groan. I know, this undead thing is the second reboot and eighth film overall in the “Resident Evil” horror franchise based on Capcom’s video game franchise. I know that none of those movies don’t suck. I also know—OK, I think—that Cregger is too smart to spend the goodwill leftover from his first two movies on recycled zombie droppings. Cregger admits he didn’t see one of those Resi throwaways. But he did play the games, especially game 4, like a rabid gamer junkie possessed.
My initial thought was Cregger must have friends, honest ones willing to call bullshit on his treading old ground, especially after “Weapons” struck box office gold and won an Oscar for Amy Madigan as the now iconic Aunt Gladys. Didn’t matter. He kept on. Some gamers whined that Cregger was too jokey, stemming from his roots in comedy as part of The Whitest Kids U’Know, the anarchic sketch group that earned a cult following. Others whimpered that he ignored the canon characters in the game to invent his own. What nerve? He kept on, thinking he could catch the exhilaration of playing the game while carving out his own place in the Evil-verse.
And aren’t we glad he did? I sure am. Cregger’s “Resident Evil” is 90 minutes of pure cinema pow. It’ll spin your head off its axis and then come back to kick it around. The first half hour is adrenaline on a stick. The rest can’t totally match it but comes close enough to make you think you died and went to mayhem movie heaven.
90 minutes of pure cinema pow
After a movie summer dominated by twentysomething cool kids Curry Barker (“Obsession”) and “Kane Parsons (“Backrooms”), old pro Cregger can still show them a few tricks. Even at double their age (he’s 45), Cregger can machine-gun creative ideas into full eruption. No one can ignite the combo of horror and humor like Cregger. His confidence behind the camera is something to behold. He keeps himself guessing and the sense that anything can happen permeates the movie.
Oh, yeah, the movie. Spoil anything and the mob will come after me with pitchforks that aren’t always metaphorical. Cregger has a true and equal partner in making “Resident Evil” such a barnburner. That’s Austin Abrams. He delivered potent acting support as the skinny, strung-out druggie you loved anyway in “Weapons.” But Abrams hard grabs the ball here and scores an acting touchdown. He’s insanely charming even when he’s scared to death. He plays Bryan, a medical courier with girlfriend problems who wants to go home and patch things up on a snowy night. But there’s an emergency. He must deliver a package, supposedly a human organ, to a hospital in Raccoon City (an Easter egg location for any Resi addict). He’s on the clock, with just one hour to do it. And that’s when zombies start dropping from rooftops and crawl out of every hole.
Cregger and co-screenwriter Shay Hatten (“John Wick Chapter 4”) seem to love mocking Bryan for helping strangers—a woman who runs into his car, a guard dog who takes his job real serious and a fat guy who makes Jabba the Hutt look like he’s on Ozempic.
Here’s where elements from the game sneak in, starting with members of the Umbrella Academy: a researcher (Zach Cherry), a scientist hilariously played by Paul Walter Hauser and an armed driver acted by Kali Reis of “True Detective: Night Country” as a walking definition of fierce. The terror escalates, like in the game, as Bryan makes his way through several circles of hell, from a sewer to the top-floor hospital maternity ward where goo-goo-gaga are not the sounds you’ll be murmuring. As it should be, the final twist is killer.
Does it involve the Umbrella Academy? Thought you’d trick me, didn’t you? When it comes to specific details about “Resident Evil,” my lips are sealed. Just tell everyone that it’s star-is-born time for Austin Abrams, that the creatures are dazzlingly disgusting, and that we should no longer wonder or worry about what Cregger decides to do next. Just be there. He’s the real deal. After three mesmerizing movies, he’s the pied piper of horror who’s earned the right to have us follow him anywhere.