RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

Studio:   TriStar Pictures
Director: Zach Cregger
Writer:   Zach Cregger, Shay Hatten
Producer: Robert Kulzer, Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Victor Hadida, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan
Stars:    Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, Will Merrick, Andrea Miltnerova, Karel Dobry, Zoe Bellas Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Griffin Newman

Review Score:

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Summary:

An unlucky organ courier unexpectedly encounters mutant monsters when he’s tasked with delivering a package to a remote mountain town.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After making a delivery to St. George’s Hospital, organ courier Bryan accepts an assignment from Dr. Maria Stokes to deliver a package to Raccoon City General Hospital in remote mountains. While driving up the snowy road in the dark, Bryan becomes distracted by a phone call with his girlfriend Michelle over her possible pregnancy, which causes him to hit a woman in the road.

Bryan collects the injured woman, who appears somewhat inhuman, and puts her in his car to take with him to the hospital. Officer Wilson soon pulls over Bryan for swerving. Once Bryan explains the situation, the officer reluctantly agrees to escort Bryan to the hospital with the woman in his patrol car.

Following behind Officer Wilson, Bryan sees the patrol car suddenly roll over off the road. Bryan exits his vehicle to find the officer dead. The woman furiously chases Bryan, forcing him to shoot her with the officer’s handgun.

Bryan finds that he has no cellphone service to call 911 and he inadvertently disabled his car’s engine with wild gunfire. Carrying the package, Bryan proceeds on foot to a nearby farm. There, Bryan has a terrifying encounter with a mutant dog that thrusts tentacles out of its face until Bryan shoots it.

Inside the farmhouse, Bryan recovers a shotgun. Still unable to reach 911, Bryan uses the house’s landline to leave a voicemail pleading for Michelle to call him back at this number.

From a window, Bryan sees the woman he shot running toward the farmhouse. Her husband, a farmer, suddenly attacks Bryan while raving in a mutated state. Michelle calls back, but Bryan is unable to answer while fighting off the farmer. The woman also attacks, prompting Bryan to blow off her head with the shotgun. Bryan is horrified to see tentacles emerge from the headless woman’s neck. The tentacles pull the farmer’s body into hers, forming a multi-limbed monstrosity that chases after Bryan.

Bryan escapes on foot to a tunnel blocked by abandoned cars. In an RV, he encounters a frightened little girl who morphs into a tentacled monster that attacks him. Bryan destroys the creature with the shotgun, but not before it bites his arm first.

The multi-limbed creature continues chasing Bryan along the snowy road until private security guard Maxine exits an approaching vehicle to shoot at it. Bryan seeks safety in the car’s backseat. A man in the passenger seat identifies himself as Paul, a representative for the Umbrella Corporation, a company contracted by the government for classified operations. Paul explains that Umbrella created a substance that can almost instantaneously transform any organism into a hyper-evolved version of itself. However, development spiraled out of control, creating chaos now spreading beyond Raccoon City. Paul informs Bryan that he has been couriering the neutralizing base that can create an antidote if they can get it to the science team in a lab on the top floor of Raccoon City General Hospital.

Bryan, Paul, and Maxine arrive in town to find Raccoon City overrun by monsters. Maxine exits the vehicle to exterminate a zombie mob attacking a bystander, but she disappears in the distance. Paul coerces Bryan into arming himself with an assault rifle so he can retrieve the car keys Maxine had on her. While Bryan is out of the vehicle, the multi-limbed creature uses its tentacles to assimilate Paul into its monstrous body.

Bryan enters a sewer to escape the creature. Underground, Bryan encounters a massive man whose enormous belly bursts, releasing a horde of rats that rush at Bryan. Bryan shoots all of the rodents, but their carcasses begin reforming into one mass. Bryan flees back up to the street.

On the street, zombies run along the rooftops on either side. To attack Bryan, the zombies jump off the buildings. Their bodies burst as they violently hit the pavement. When their bodies don’t reform, Bryan realizes they can die.

Bryan makes it to the hospital, which is now on fire. Seeing that his bite infection is spreading up his arm, Bryan records an emotional message for Michelle to tearfully apologize for how he reacted to the news of her possible pregnancy.

Over an intercom, a voice instructs Bryan to deliver the package by ascending to the 24th floor, crossing a skybridge, and continuing to the lab on the 28th floor of the neighboring building. Due to the danger posed by the fires, the voice cautions Bryan to use the stairs instead of the elevator. However, due to exhaustion after climbing just four flights of stairs, Bryan decides to take the elevator anyway.

In the elevator shaft, a humanoid monster pukes acid that eats away the elevator car’s ceiling and floor. Additional creatures including the multi-limbed mass continue their attempts to reach Bryan. Bryan ascends the elevator shaft via a cable and uses the puker’s vomit to repel the pursuing monsters.

After encountering more monsters in the maternity ward, Bryan battles the multi-limbed mass along the ruined skybridge. Bryan eventually causes the creature to break apart, separating its accumulated bodies to drop to the ground far below.

With his infection worsening, Bryan makes it to the lab where he delivers the package to Carl, who leads a science team that also includes Birdie, Stanley, Wade, Dave, and Agatha. As they hurriedly work to create the cure, the scientists become alarmed when they see Bryan transforming into a monster. Unable to control his newly formed tentacles, Bryan kills or assimilates team members until only Dave remains. Frightened of the danger, Dave flees the lab with a syringe containing the cure.

Fully mutated, Bryan catches up to Dave for a confrontation on the skybridge. Although Bryan fights to retain sentience, he is again unable to control his tentacles, which tear apart Dave and cause the needle to fall to the ground below. An approaching helicopter shines its spotlight on Bryan, confirming he is completely transformed into a grotesque monstrosity.

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Review:

Other than niche details like a shotgun on a fireplace rack or a diamond symbol on a key, there isn’t much in the first half of director Zach Cregger’s 2026 “Resident Evil” movie that directly mirrors the video game series it’s based on. For hardcore fanatics of the franchise, the absence of signature nemeses and beloved characters like Leon Kennedy is enough cause to decry the film for not being “Resident Evil” enough.

From the opposite angle though, choosing not to enslave itself to 30+ years of lore spanning at least two dozen games frees the film to follow a new, independent road of Cregger’s choosing. Besides, if fans really want Leon, Claire, Chris, Jill, and Ada, four animated features already exist to scratch that itch. There’s also a CGI miniseries, a live-action Netflix series, the Netflix film “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” (review here), the Milla Jovovich movies, and countless comics, books, and other media already doing what those fans demand. Let this “Resident Evil” welcome newcomers into a zombified world without requiring signs to lead them through a minefield of Easter eggs, preexisting people, and confusing references they’d need a strategy guide to figure out.

This “Resident Evil” is a horror movie first and foremost, but it also features a fair deal of humor. It’s not satirical like “Young Frankenstein.” It’s not silly or slapstick-y like “Shaun of the Dead.” It’s not driven by over-the-top behavior or one-liners like “Zombieland.” To describe “Resident Evil’s” style, a better word than “comedic” might be “amusing,” as most of the intentional yet subtle laughs come from its lovably hapless hero stumbling into one monster-filled mishap after another.

“Resident Evil” chronicles one extraordinary night in the formerly ordinary life of Bryan, an organ courier in the middle of a phone argument with his girlfriend over her possible pregnancy. After dropping off a life-saving donation at one hospital, Bryan picks up a job delivering another package to Raccoon City General Hospital. The catch is, Raccoon City is located in remote mountains, so Bryan will have to navigate a snowy road in the dark to get there. The other catch is, a shadowy corporation’s awry experiment recently turned the town into a haven of horror, though Bryan doesn’t know that yet.

He starts figuring things out fast as soon as he hits a seemingly inhuman woman in the middle of the road. This accident knocks over a domino line where Bryan meets a cop, a farmer, and a few other folks throughout a series of increasingly shocking encounters. With the script structured similarly to a video game, Bryan basically bounces from one level to the next as he fights off demonic dogs, transforming terrors, and a multi-limbed monstrosity that rolls around assimilating new victims into a macabre Katamari Damacy ball.

Humor comes from the hard times Bryan experiences while trying to complete each “level.” One running gag has his progress repeatedly halted by padlocks because his poor aim can’t shoot them off. Other setups put Bryan in perilous predicaments of his own making, like when an unathletic hop results in a fence electrocution, or he falls on his face from an unsecured pulley after discarding a ladder that would have been useful. Trust me when I tell you there’s nothing “Three Stooges” about his antics. They simply play into his endearing personality of a resilient Everyman getting put through the proverbial wringer.

Occasional chuckles don’t get in the way of plentiful carnage. Not by any means. “Resident Evil” remains chock full of rooftop runners bursting into blood bombs when they cannonball to the ground, a blue Baron Harkonnen releasing a horde of rats from his belly, a mutant belching acidic vomit, and so much more. Sure, you could redesign the creatures to bear less of a resemblance to tentacled enemies from the games, change the name of the town as well as the Umbrella Corporation, and the movie might be unrecognizable as being based on an established property. But how closely it sticks to what came before has no bearing on how entertaining “Resident Evil” is as a splattery spectacle streaked with gory gags.

Most surprising is how compact “Resident Evil” is for a major movie with potential fire to reignite a profitable franchise. You’d think there would be motivation to go “blockbuster big,” but Cregger is content to keep his movie contained to a few locations, with only 19 characters listed in the credits, several of whom are just “Pedestrian,” “Puker,” and “Voice on Intercom.” Notable TV names like “Severance’s” Zach Cherry, “True Detective: Night Country’s” Kali Reis, and “Doctor Who’s” Jo Martin fly by in “blink and you’ll miss them” roles that are barely more than cameos. “Cobra Kai’s” Paul Walter Hauser gets a lot more dialogue, yet even he stays mostly seated in a car for his scenes.

By the time the 90-minute mark hits, end credits are already underway following an abrupt ending sure to leave some viewers confused and/or disappointed. Really though, it’s one final reminder that “Resident Evil” aims to be fun, even though its efforts to be that can come off as flippant or flighty. It will probably end up as one of the lesser works in Zach Cregger’s expanding filmography, which already includes the outstanding “Barbarian” (review here) and the acclaimed “Weapons” (review here), though that doesn’t diminish how enjoyable “Resident Evil” can be in the moment as easy-to-digest escapism.

Review Score: 65

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