Resident Evil

4 outta 5

Resident Evil by Weapons director Zach Cregger is an intense movie of unrelenting chase and monster scenes with a lot of unexpectedly funny bits. It isn’t exactly the most faithful adaptation of the Resident Evil games, but neither were the first six films. The one faithful Resident Evil adaptation was Welcome to Racoon City that no one really liked. This does capture the intensity of the games of constantly being hounded by zombies and monsters as the player travels across the city to complete objectives. Also the main character here kind of sucks at Resident Evil which is very relatable to players who suck at Resident Evil. This movie seems to be more inspired by The Thing than the Resident Evil games but Resident Evil 4 took a lot from The Thing. As much as the Resident Evil games are very heavy on gooey monsters which this film delivers. This movie also has an aggressively abrupt ending which is apt because it is like when someone is playing the game and die in an aggressively abrupt ending.

Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a Medical Courier delivering a special package to the Umbrella Corporation in Raccoon City. He hits a woman with a car but she gets up and attacks a cop and then chases Bryan around viciously. He then confronts a dog with monster tentacles and, even weirder, the woman absorbs a corpse with monster tentacles and morphs into a giant multi-person monster chasing him across the city. He finds an Umbrella Corporation employee, Paul (Paul Walter Hauser) and the mercenary Maxie (Kali Reis) who say the package Bryan is carrying contains a cure for the mutant mayhem. Now Bryan has to deliver it to Umbrella labs and hope they make a cure that even Bryan himself will desperately need.

While this may not be a faithful adaptation of the game, it really nails the vibe. There’s an episodic progression from one monster scene to another, which feels like playing Resident Evil as player is often harassed by a mutant monster. There is a scene in the film where a very gross mutated patient is puking up acidic vomit that eats through an elevator that Bryan is traveling in. He has to jump to safety like something in a game where the player would escape from a collapsing environment. Bryan is very bad at using guns; he doesn’t know how to reload and constantly checks his ammo levels. There is a scene when Bryan finds a girl who has been infected and her transformation into something monstrous is downright shocking. Another very twisted bit is when Bryan ends up at a maternity ward with incubating monsters. The Resident Evil games feature tentacle merged people monsters, and while the creature here may not be from the game, it feels authentic to the series. When Bryan blows the head off a rampaging zombie it looks like a kill from the games. When Bryan causes a horde of zombies to take out the giant rampaging monster he yells in triumph, “Yeah, videogames!” There are also fast-running possessed people, which is in the games and also a trick Cregger used in Weapons.

Abrams is very entertaining as Bryan which is quite a feat since he is basically alone and running the whole time. Some of his dialogue gets a little repetitive as he says the f-word like breathing and punctuation. But he is very good at looking exhausted, stunned and annoyed. There is a moment when two corpses are merging together with monster tentacles and his low-key “Oh wow” reaction is very funny. There is also a brief side story about Bryan and his pregnant girlfriend that tries to humanize him but it seems unnecessary. Hauser as the Umbrella guy gets in some funny exposition about what the cure is, as the guys are awed at Maxie’s ability to mow down zombies. When Paul gets absorbed into the big monster, one of the movie’s most horrific images is Paul’s face in the merged monster.

To dip into spoiler territory and the aggressively abrupt ending: like in many zombie movies the main character gets infected. By the end, Bryan turns into one of the big merged monsters, unable to control himself as he absorbs other people. It is darkly twisted that Bryan delivers the cure but nobody can inject it in him as he becomes more monstrous. He looks a lot like a Resident Evil Boss Enemy, all hulking and enlarged limbs and barely articulate. By the end he’s screaming at approaching helicopters, entirely a monster, then it cuts to black and ends. It does feel like an ending for a player in the Resident Evil games with the player constantly dying. Also this movie could be seen as an origin story for any one of the giant monsters the players encounter in the game. The mutated monsters never really get a backstory in the Resident Evil games, they’re just obstacles that Chris or Jill mow down with superior firepower, but this is a look into what the personal history of those monsters could be. If one wants a faithful Resident Evil adaptation, this isn’t it. But as an intense monster chase movie, this Resident Evil delivers.