Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Long-time ‘Resident Evil’ fans rejoice, because this 2026 reboot is super fun, even if it sometimes makes no sense! After that 2022 train wreck of a series, I had almost sworn off the franchise. But my brother was in town, we have shared nostalgia of playing the ‘Resident Evil’ games as kids, so we picked this one for our ‘siblings day out’ and had a good time. Even better, the film goes back to the T-virus origin timeline, following an ill-fated delivery guy tasked with delivering an important package on a cold, snowy night and he ends up battling crazy monsters along the way. Poor guy isn’t even sure if what’s happening to him is real!
Directed by Zach Cregger, who’s co-written the script with Shay Hatten, ‘Resident Evil’ stars Austin Abrams as Bryan, the most earnest courier guy you will ever meet in a horror movie. He is assigned to deliver something very important to a hospital in Racoon City (fans would know that it’s ground zero for the zombie outbreak, but Bryan doesn’t) and the gig pays double. It’s basically a ‘Resident Evil’ campaign where, instead of choosing the badass hero with combat skills, you’ve accidentally selected the clueless courier NPC and now have to finish the game with him.
This POV of a regular dude just trying to deliver something is hilarious as hell: he encounters lots of undead along the way, and instead of running back home, he keeps trying to do his job. It’s ‘mission: deliver package to zombie-infested hospital’ for Bryan. Chunks of the film unfold like you’re playing the game or watching someone else stream their game-play. Bryan encounters plenty of infected, very few friendly humans, picks up some guns and tries to complete his mission to the best of his ability. And even though he cannot shoot to save his life, he knows when to run and manages to scrape through several catastrophic events without losing his intestines.
The opening stretch of ‘Resident Evil’ is easily its strongest, with Bryan getting into an accident and finding himself stranded on a deserted road, and you know that can only mean bad news in a horror movie. For starters, there’s no cellphone service, obviously, and the only house within sight looks like it could be haunted. “Hello, I have a bit of a problem. I was wondering if I could use your phone,” he politely tells the potentially evil residents. Bryan saying hello to almost everyone he encounters, even when they look 100% NOT OKAY, is low-key the best running gag in the film.
Austin Abrams previously worked with director Zach Cregger on the acclaimed horror film ‘Weapons’, and even there, he played the kind of character you’d easily forget, yet was among the more entertaining elements of the story. In fact, a few scenes here feel like callbacks to ‘Weapons’, especially one where a lone zombie comes running towards Bryan while he practically shits his pants. Sure, we probably won’t remember Bryan in a few years, but while you’re watching ‘Resident Evil’, Austin Abrams keeps you thoroughly entertained as the random guy trying to survive crazy monsters in a dead city.
There isn’t much story here, but the razor-sharp focus on one regular guy against a bunch of wacky monsters makes it play out like a dark horror-comedy, with consistent laughs throughout its 90-minute runtime. The special effects are designed to make you feel like you’re playing a ‘Resident Evil’ game, and the creators deliver some really good jump scares.
It’s only in the final stretch that ‘Resident Evil’ starts to lose its tension and edge, becoming more chaotically loud than comically chaotic. The ending itself feels underwhelming and surprisingly abrupt. But considering I hadn’t even watched a trailer and went in completely blind, I certainly wasn’t expecting to have this much fun with it. The light-hearted horror-comedy, meta humour and callbacks to older ‘Resident Evil’ material make this feel like a surprisingly fresh take on a franchise that has been struggling on screen for years. Maybe horror-comedy and Zach Cregger were exactly what ‘Resident Evil’ needed to bring it back from the dead. If you’re a fan, just go watch it.
Watch ‘Resident Evil’ in theaters.
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