Constantin Film first optioned the Resident Evil video game series in 1997. And they had no idea what to do with it. Here we had a Japanese video game series adapted by a German film studio, an R-rated blood-soaked franchise that had to be tailored for a PG-13 audience. Not even George Romero could find a way to square that circle, and he cranked out half a dozen drafts in the attempt.

Constantin wanted Paul W.S. Anderson, after he had so successfully adapted the uber-violent Mortal Kombat games into a PG-13 movie. And he didn’t want to do it for the same reason. So Anderson offered a compromise: He would write and direct his own stand-alone sci-fi/horror flick. If Capcom liked it, they could make edits and reshoots in post to retroactively slap on the Resident Evil branding. And if they didn’t, Constantin would have a film ready to hit the market and recoup what they had already spent in development.

The plan was so crazy, it worked. Capcom and Constantin got their movie, Anderson met his future wife — playing the film series’ protagonist who didn’t exist in the games — and they all proceeded to make Resident Evil films together until they physically couldn’t anymore. But that’s another story.

There have been some attempts at rebooting Resident Evil on film since the Anderson era ended, but none of them went anywhere. Not that any of the RE films were critical successes in the first place, but it seemed like the massively popular lore and characters of the iconic game series couldn’t make the leap to the big screen in a more faithful adaptation. It doesn’t make any sense on paper, but here we are.

So now they’re going back to what worked. And they’re doing it with a vastly more competent filmmaker.

Resident Evil (2026) comes to us from Zach Cregger, who recently and quickly rose to prominence through atmospheric horror films that are borderline impossible to discuss without spoilers. And he delivered a movie that has basically fuck-all to do with the games. This could be a standalone movie without any of the RE branding or characters or lore and virtually nothing would change.

Certainly, that makes the film a terrible introduction to the games, and the fan service on offer will only be rewarding to the hardest of the hardcore, if that. But on the other hand, it means the filmmakers could put more focused effort on delivering a better movie. And, uh… yeah, it’s a pretty damn good movie. On its own merits.

Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a workaday schlub trying to make ends meet by working as a medical courier. I might add that he’s recently knocked up his girlfriend and the two have conflicting views about next steps. So he’s particularly anxious about money in particular and everything in general.

The plot kicks off when Bryan agrees to take a super-urgent top-secret delivery through hazardous inclement weather (so no cell phone reception, of course), with the promise of double the usual pay. The kicker is that he’s unknowingly driving straight into an unfolding zombie apocalypse. Hilarity ensues.

Here’s the thing about Bryan: He’s incompetent. His demonstrated intelligence rates somewhere around “high school dropout”. He’s visibly out of shape and untrained in any kind of self-defense. Indeed, he keeps making classic boneheaded mistakes like he’s never seen a zombie movie before. He barely knows one end of a gun from another. On top of all that, he is chronically unlucky to a degree that would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. A chimpanzee would be more qualified than this guy at surviving an apocalypse.

Yet paradoxically, Bryan’s ineptitude is a huge part of why this movie works.

Granted, it helps that while Bryan is a pitifully incapable protagonist, he’s not a bad person. Sure, he’s out for money, but that’s more because of desperation than greed. I might add that as bad as things get, and as much as Bryan fears for his own life, he maintains his sense of compassion and he genuinely doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. As a direct result, Bryan hits that sweet spot where he’s just sympathetic enough that we can cheer when he succeeds, but he’s also just stupid and self-centered enough that we can laugh at his misfortunes.

I might add that the Resident Evil games are (or were, at least, back when the franchise started) survival horror. It’s all about the challenge of running away and staying hidden, paired with the terror and suspense of knowing that getting spotted or caught means inevitable death. That got increasingly rare for the franchise, as the characters and stories kept escalating to a status far larger than life. A “survival horror” movie centered around Leon Kennedy or Jill Valentine never would’ve worked at this point. But a survival horror movie with this poor stupid bastard works just fine.

Another important point in fairness to Bryan is that in this picture, literally everyone is at least as comically inept as he is. The film’s Umbrella Corporation bigwig is played by Paul Walter Hauser, which tells you everything you need to know. And the Umbrella scientists are all a bunch of hapless cowards. Even when we’re lucky enough to meet a character who’s capable with a gun, they’re invariably killed within five minutes.

While the film doesn’t adapt any stories or characters from the games, it did take liberal inspiration from certain recurring gameplay tropes. There’s a running gag about how locks are all somehow impervious to gunfire. Bryan is confronted with numerous puzzles and key-hunts, and he comically fails at each and every one. So it’s not really “reference” or “adaptation” so much as “parody”. Whether that’s a bug or a feature is once again dependent on personal taste.

All of this to say that the film primarily works as a horror/comedy. If you’ve seen Barbarian (Justin Long’s character) or Weapons (Gladys’ demise), then you’ve already had a taste of Cregger’s twisted sense of humor. Imagine that same sense of humor over 90 minutes and that’s what you’ve got with this movie.

For better or worse, Resident Evil (2026) was not at all what I expected. It’s a smaller and more intimate film with virtually zero fan service or tie-ins to other franchise entries, built in such a way that any future sequels would be pretty much impossible. So it’s based on a huge franchise, yet it was built to be the exact opposite of a franchise movie. That’s a unique kind of diabolical genius, in a way.

Personally, I would’ve preferred it if Cregger could’ve done his own thing and made his own movie on his own terms without any connection to the greater franchise. On the other hand, that’s pretty much exactly what he did. And he somehow tricked the corporate overlords into giving him a bigger budget by licensing an established brand. I’m not sure how Cregger got away with that, but good on him for it.

All of that aside, is it a good movie? Well, yeah. It’s a fun little romp with enough scares and laughs to pass a bit of time. The catch is that it’s being marketed as a huge must-see franchise tentpole, and it’s terrible by those standards. Then again, the trailers never reflect the full experience when Zach Cregger is involved. So adjust your expectations and give it a look.