Resident Evil and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by Zach Cregger
If I could get one wish of unlimited facetious power, It’d be for every single gamer to get an offline hobby which, to my mind, would solve at least ten percent of the world’s problems. An extremely vocal minority of us is far too enamored with their own sense of self-importance, and this has only grown stronger in a Post-GooberGate world where the malignant moans of the man-babies can reach those in the highest seats of power. Sadly, they seem to have turned their ire on critically acclaimed filmmaker and all-around cool dude Zach Cregger for not taking the Resident Evil franchise seriously enough in a movie that they hadn’t seen yet, and while no one is saying outright just how “persuasive” these complaints were, Cregger has confirmed that the movie was reedited after test screenings to take out a lot of jokes. Heaven forbid that we don’t have a laugh at one of the campiest franchises in all of gaming, but let’s not let the behind the scenes drama overwhelm everything. After all, one of Hollywood’s fastest rising stars has directed a video game movie that actually looks really good; even if it’s not an obvious adaptation of a specific entry in the series which I’m sure would have made the fans happy but I’d wager would be a far less interesting movie given that this is the same fantastically creative mind that gave us Barbarians and Weapons. Is this the creative and artistically challenging entry that finally elevates the Resident Evil film franchise, or was it better left in the hands of B-Movie maestros like Paul WS Anderson? Let’s find out!!
Poor sad-sack Bryan (Austin Abrams) is yet another victim of the gig economy and is stuck delivering organs through some particularly morbid app-based service while arguing with his girlfriend over some unexpected news. The job and conversation are cut short, however, when he runs over a woman who doesn’t seem all that affected by it, and he finds even weirder happening at a nearby farmhouse when he goes looking for help. It seems that the Umbrella Corporation has done what they always do and accidentally released a virus that is turning everyone into tentacle monsters, and they all want to turn our boy into a Bryan-sandwich before the night is through. The only hope he and the rest of humanity has is in the box he’s delivering to Raccoon City Hospital, but with so much in the way and so few life skills for such a situation, the future looks rather grim for us all. Will Bryan find the will to save the day and fight for the life he’s been taking for granted all these years? Is there any hope of fixing all of this, even if Bryan can make his way to the hospital and give the scientists what they need to craft a cure? The worst part is, he’s probably not gonna get a good tip either way.
Whatever drama may or may not have happened behind the scenes between Cregger, the studio, and the saddest fanboys this side of Joker-stans, the end result is a great little zombie flick that strongly benefits from Cregger’s unique directorial vision. Is it his best work? Well Weapons is quite obviously an incredibly hard act to follow, but for a rather straightforward franchise film, it hits the mark with precision and panache. It looks amazing with great use of lighting and creative camerawork that keeps you on the edge of your seat whenever things start to get too quiet, and his comedic chops are as strong as they’ve ever been with some scenes in here feeling like big budget version of Whitest Kids U Know sketches. It has the feel of a blow-off movie to let go of some steam after making a movie as intense as Weapons, and frankly, that’s the exact emotional state that I’d want from someone making a Resident Evil movie. Taking the material too seriously would have undoubtedly made this a chore to get through and sapped out all of the fun which has been an unavoidably iconic part of the series. Fans should not take the material more seriously than its creators, and while Resident Evil has some iconic and even emotionally difficult moments, it wouldn’t be the same if you took the cathartic joy out of it and replaced it with po-faced self-seriousness.
What makes this undeniably Resident Evil without ever feeling like a particular piece of the Resident Evil story is in the details, but not in the Easter Eggs; a creeping sense of dread and sick biological horror with the splatter fun of an Evil Dead movie to break the tension. The series of horror set-pieces are, much like the series, a little overdone but nonetheless effective with creature designs straight out of the fevered nightmares of Junji Ito and a sense of comedic timing that’s just as dread-inducing as it is laugh out loud funny. Despite Bryan’s lack of roundhouse kick and boulder punching skills, he fits into the world that the movie creates and remains grounded enough for the film’s more absurd moments to feel all the more potent. He never comes off as a knowing outsider who’s been transplanted into this absurd scenario, but he also never quite belongs wherever it is he ends up. He’s always an inconvenience despite being the only one who can do anything in this chaotic situation, and its fun to watch him grow as the universe decides to make him the protagonist for a day; giving him a unique identity in the grand pantheon of Resident Evil clueless protagonists.
Still, I will concede a small point to the obnoxious fanboys who, as usual, end up ruining everything they touch with their incessant whining and pants-filling rage. While Bryan is a solid protagonist for the story this movie is trying to tell, I did find him to be a little bit grating by the halfway point which is also where the movie starts spinning its wheels as it meanders towards a conclusion. Yes, he has strong character moments and does become a more competent protagonist as he gets closer to his goal, but I feel like he needed a foil to bounce off of which is where a more traditional Resident Evil hero would have been useful. The film does tease this as a possibility for a fun gag at the exact point I was thinking about it, but after that’s all said and done I do feel like the movie runs short on momentum. The film still cooks at a solid pace and the set-pieces are genuinely inventive and horrifying, but it doesn’t grow much beyond that for a very long stretch of the runtime. This could have been easily overlooked with a spectacular finale, but it ends on a rather dismal note that neither feels sufficiently triumphant or gut-wrenchingly tragic. It just feels, well, kind of pointless. It’s not a gag, it doesn’t really say anything about the movie or the world it takes place in, and it comes across like we got the bad ending of a video game where you forgot to do all the side-quests. This may just be a problem for me as I’m sure there will be those who appreciate the incompleteness that it’s striving for, but I found it to be rather deflating in a way that left a bad taste in my mouth.
The success of this movie means there’s a non-zero chance that we’ll get a Director’s Cut at some point which will be Cregger’s original vision, and I would very much like to see that. Cregger is certainly doing more for this series than this series is doing for him, and he’s got a strong enough track record that I would love to know what was too sacrilege for the fanboys to stomach. As it stands, the movie has a strong sense of atmosphere and a solid protagonist which serves it well for the first half and manages to hold together through inventive set-pieces and laugh out loud comedy that in no way feels incongruous to the series that gave us Albert Wesker’s hairdo and one liners about bingo. This gets a strong recommendation from me even if I wasn’t too enthused about the ending, and while I don’t think Cregger should waste his time making another one of these, I’d be interested in even more auteur driven glimpses into this wacky franchise. Heck, give it to Neil Breen for all I care. You think it’d be any worse than Resident Evil 6?
4/5
The Reviewers Unite 