Finally, an adaptation that did not suck

You’re Not Leon Kennedy. You’re Bryan. Good Luck. Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil isn’t a 1:1 adaptation of the games. Instead, it asks a much more terrifying question: what would the first day of the Raccoon City outbreak actually feel like if you were just some guy caught in it?

🚨 HUGE SPOILER WARNING 🚨

STOP HERE IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN RESIDENT EVIL (2026). This review discusses major plot reveals. If you want to experience the movie completely blind, go watch it first. If you specifically want to know where the jump scares are because you enjoy horror with a little preparation, this is also your warning. We are getting into it.

Imagine being sent into Raccoon City on the first day of the outbreak without knowing an outbreak is happening. You don’t have military training, you don’t know anything about Umbrella, and you certainly don’t understand why the people around you are suddenly behaving like something has gone horribly wrong. You have a job to finish, a girlfriend waiting for you at home, and a medical package sitting in the passenger seat.

That’s how we met the main character, Bryan. He’s a medical courier who gets offered double pay for one last delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital.

And that’s where Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil finds its secret weapon: perspective.

Movie still via The Hollywood Reporter

What If You Were There on Day One?

We’ve seen Raccoon City through the eyes of people who know how to survive it. The games are full of characters who, while still vulnerable, are at least equipped to deal with the nightmare in front of them. Bryan has none of that.

He doesn’t know what’s happening, and neither does the version of us sitting in the theater alongside him. The movie lets the situation deteriorate gradually, from a strange encounter on a snowy road to increasingly impossible encounters with the infected, until the reality of the outbreak becomes unavoidable.

Movie still via PC Gamer

Even more interestingly, the warning signs aren’t contained neatly within Raccoon City. Bryan’s story begins with a hospital delivery outside the city, where the film has already planted signs that something is wrong. Patients are showing wounds that look suspiciously like the injuries we’ll eventually associate with the outbreak. By the time Bryan reaches Raccoon City, it feels less like he’s witnessing the beginning of the disaster and more like he’s finally arriving at the place where everyone realizes the disaster has already begun.

For Bryan, unfortunately, that’s also the night he happens to be working overtime.

Bryan is Realistically Terrible at This

One of the easiest ways to ruin a horror movie is to make the protagonist suspiciously competent. Give someone a gun and suddenly they’re hitting headshots like they’ve been training with the FBI since childhood. But Zach Cregger decided not to do that.

Movie still via Fears Magazine

Bryan struggles with the gun because shooting a gun is a learned skill. He doesn’t have a videogame crosshair hovering in front of his face, and he doesn’t suddenly become good at shooting because the plot has decided he needs to be. At one point, his own explanation is basically that he only uses guns in video games. That sounds like a small detail, but it changes how the entire movie feels.

When Bryan raises the gun, there is weight to it. He’s holding a flashlight with his phone, trying to see in front of him while carrying something he’s barely comfortable using. His aim isn’t perfect. His decisions aren’t always smart. Panic makes him clumsy. This is what 99% of us would’ve looked like if we get thrown into an outbreak– with or without guns.

The games give you a sense of control because you are controlling the character. Cregger takes that control away. You’re watching someone who is learning the rules at the exact same time that the audience is.

Cregger Makes Everything Feel Heavy

There’s an unusual physicality to Resident Evil that helps sell its more ridiculous moments. The guns Bryan held has weight and the flashlight is not perfect. When Bryan tries some of the classic cinematic solutions we’ve seen a hundred times—like ramming something with a car—you can actually feel how badly that could go in real life.

Movie still via Fears Magazine

The same principle applies to the monsters. Cregger doesn’t treat them like videogame enemies waiting for their health bars to disappear. The creatures slam into things, stumble, crash and carry actual physical mass. The grotesque amalgamations are particularly effective because they look less like polished boss fights and more like a pile of flesh that should not physically be able to move.

The movie’s creature work leans heavily into body horror, with reviewers pointing out the warped limbs, fused bodies and grotesque mutations that make the infected feel less like conventional zombies and more like something genuinely unnatural.

And then there’s the blood. So much blood.

Screenshots via Reddit

The movie understands that gore becomes more disturbing when it starts feeling messy rather than decorative. Fresh flesh, rotting bodies, ruptured wounds and whatever the hell is happening to these people all contribute to the sense that Raccoon City is becoming physically disgusting.

You can almost smell it. That’s when the movie’s horror starts working beyond the jump scares. You’re imagining what the room would smell like after it had been sitting there for hours.

The Scariest Part Is Realizing How Screwed You’d Be

The first act is particularly good at slowly stripping away Bryan’s options.

This is where the movie feels most like playing Resident Evil. Several reviewers have pointed out that Cregger isn’t faithfully adapting the plot of a particular game so much as recreating the experience of playing one: exploring unfamiliar spaces, solving problems with limited information, dealing with locked doors and trying to figure out what the hell is waiting around the next corner. (TheWrap)

Movie still via Bloody Disgusting

Except the movie makes one crucial change: that you are not in control, Bryan is. And he is SUPER terrified right now.

That makes the slow descent into the outbreak much more effective than immediately dumping us into a city full of zombies. The movie gives you time to understand that something is wrong before showing you exactly how wrong it is.

This Isn’t a 1:1 Resident Evil Adaptation

Let’s get this out of the way: if you’re looking for the movie equivalent of booting up Resident Evil 2 and watching the game play out on a giant screen, this isn’t it. Cregger isn’t interested in simply recreating the game’s story beat-for-beat. He wanted to borrow the experience of Resident Evil.

That’s why you get the locked doors, the strange environments, the limited resources, the monsters, the sudden violence, the first-person sequences and the feeling that every new room could contain either the solution to your problem or something that wants to tear you apart.

TheWrap described the movie as a faithful adaptation of what it feels like to play a classic Resident Evil rather than a faithful adaptation of one particular storyline, while Slant similarly described the games as more of a starting point than a strict blueprint. (TheWrap)

And I think there’s an interesting way to look at the movie because of that.

Movie still via AP News

This could almost be the literal birth of Resident Evil. Not the birth of the franchise itself, obviously, but the birth of the world we’re familiar with. We’re simply watching it happen from the perspective of the guy who drew the shortest possible straw.

And Somehow, It’s Funny

This movie is not perfect.

Cregger’s balance between horror and comedy can be clumsy, particularly once the movie moves deeper into Raccoon City and starts leaning harder into Bryan’s increasingly ridiculous situation. Some critics have specifically noted that the comedy can eventually undercut the tension, even though the earlier scares work extremely well. (Tom’s Guide)

But here’s the thing: I think Resident Evil needs some of that ridiculousness.

Movie still via GamesRadar

The games have always lived in a weird space where horrifying body horror exists alongside absurd situations, strange dialogue and increasingly insane monsters. Cregger doesn’t try to turn the franchise into a relentlessly miserable zombie drama.

TheWrap even argues that the movie captures the strange dichotomy that has always defined the series: it can begin as genuine horror, gradually become ridiculous, and still work because that contradiction is part of Resident Evil’s identity. (TheWrap)

Austin Abrams Is Perfect for This Movie

The entire experiment falls apart if Bryan isn’t someone you want to spend 90 minutes watching suffer. Austin Abrams makes him incredibly easy to root for. Abrams plays Bryan like a regular guy whose already shitty day has somehow escalated into the worst night imaginable. His reactions sell the ridiculousness of the situation without completely destroying the horror, and several reviews have singled him out as the film’s biggest strength. (AP News)

He’s also the perfect counterpoint to the usual Resident Evil protagonist. And if you were actually dropped into Raccoon City on Day One, you’d probably be a lot closer to Bryan than Leon.