Resident Evil

‘It looks good, but scary it ain’t,’ was Time Out’s verdict on the very first console-to-cinema transplant of Resident Evil way back in 2002. 

Twenty-six years, eight movies and approximately a billion splattery kills later, things haven’t changed all that much. The filmmaking has had an upgrade – from the journeyman efforts of Paul WS Anderson to the more elevated craft of Weapons and Barbarian’s Zach Cregger – but the new-look take on Capcom’s gory survival game is still more goofy and good-looking than actually frightening.  

Our zombie-afflicted hero this time is Weapons’ Austin Abrams – who between this and the upcoming Whalefall, in which he gets swallowed by a sperm whale, is having the most gloopy breakout year in memory. 

To say he is not in the ass-kicking Milla Jovovich mold would be understating it. His medical courier, Bryan, is closer to the second coming of McLovin in Superbad as he transports a top-priority organ container to Raccoon City General. As any gamer knows, awaiting him on his drive through the snowy forests of wherever-the-heck-we-are is a whole spectrum of gross-out monsters and apocalyptic mayhem, all courtesy of the nefarious Umbrella Corporation’s out-of-control bioweapon.

For a zombie horror it moves at a leisurely pace. Cregger lets the peril unfold in a slow-burn sequence involving an infected woman tumbling over Bryan’s bonnet and who he, rather sweetly, tries to care for, ignoring the blood-soaked arm she keeps thrusting in his face. Abrams brings a loveable, slow-on-the-uptake quality as Bryan tries to figure out what the hell is going on, f-bombing his way through a series of mind-bendingly icky scenarios, involving a rogue dog, a farmhouse, and, in the film’s most unsettling moment, a sole survivor on an RV.

More goofy and good-looking than actually frightening

As you might expect from a fan of the games, Cregger is doggedly faithful to the console experience – and gaming logic often prevails over the movie kind. Characters venture off-screen and disappear, never to be seen again. Paul Walter Hauser’s Umbrella scientist speaks entirely in cut-screen exposition. All the games’ puzzles and challenges are represented, from electric fences to blocked tunnels, each carefully tackled but hardly zippy to watch. Cregger seems to recognise this and addresses Bryan’s umpteenth padlock or firearm problem with a wink. ‘I only use guns in video games,’ notes Bryan. ‘It’s confusing in real life.’ 

But all this leaves plotting scant, beyond a cursory subplot involving his unseen girlfriend and one genuinely emotional scene. As gnarly as the creature design is – and props to an acid-vomiting ghoul and the bundle of cartwheeling limbs that stalks Bryan – most of the unnerving mood comes via Hays and Ryan Holladay’s pulsating score. John Carpenter and Rob Bottin’s work on The Thing feels like an inspiration for the monsters, if not the tension-building.

After his first two breakout movies, it’d be a thrill to report that Cregger’s latest is a Weapons-grade horror classic rather than just a handsome-looking and occasionally inspired addition to the funhouse zombie genre. It’s not that. But on its own terms, it’s still a fun Friday night ride that’ll leave you checking yourself for flying gore. 

In cinemas worldwide Fri Sep 18.