JONESING FOR FILMS

Resident Evil is a long-running video game franchise that has spawned several critically acclaimed games across multiple platforms and produced a series of movies that were not as warmly received. In steps director Zach Cregger, of Barbarian and Weapons fame, to kick off a reboot of the franchise with Resident Evil.

This film apparently takes place concurrently with the events of the 1998 video game, Resident Evil 2, but updated to a contemporary setting. A medical courier, Bryan (Austin Abrams), decides to take on an extra delivery because it is higher pay. Venturing out into a severe snowstorm in his beat up hunk of junk compact car, Bryan must cross a mountain range to get his high-priority, time-sensitive cargo to Raccoon City. On his way there, fighting the snow and having a difficult conversation with his pregnant girlfriend, he hits a pedestrian that wanders into his path. When he investigates, it sends him down a road to hell that he didn’t bargain for as his night quickly turns into a survival scenario.

I never got into playing the Resident Evil games, and I quickly lost interest in the movie franchise that starred Mila Jovovich. My general impression is that the movies became a post-apocalyptic mashup of Mad Max and Underworld with remake Dawn of the Dead fast zombies. It was a franchise with an emphasis on the action more than the horror.

That is not the case with Cregger’s Resident Evil. Cregger leans into the horror of monsters lurking in the dark. This film does a tremendous job of establishing a horror atmosphere, much like an effective video game would do. The dark of night is almost enveloping and the snow almost feel intrusive and oppressive, like you really are confined to what you can see with the car’s headlights or the flashlight on your phone. The weather of this movie is palpable.

The cold helps create a sense of foreboding too. Also helpful is the pacing. Until things really pick up when Bryan enters Raccoon City and the third act, things happen slowly and then suddenly, almost like a rollercoaster. You anticipate that something is wrong and then it becomes suddenly clear that it is more messed up and dangerous than Bryan/the audience realized.

There is also some comedy, provided mostly by Bryan’s reactions to things, muttering to himself, swearing at inanimate objects, and in some cases embracing flat out denial because he can’t process what he just saw or what he just had to do. There is a scene involving a dog and a barn at a remote farmhouse that even has some physical comedy that feels inspired by Buster Keaton’s silent films.

The opening scenes at a hospital establish Bryan as someone who is a little squeamish when it comes to blood and guts, making for an even more trying night for him. The night gets increasingly bloody and and the body horror quotient gets turned up exponentially over the course of the film. Early on, the body horror is used for jump scares and intended to horrify, like something foreign, unfamiliar, and unnatural; later on, it becomes more tangible and personal.

The movie progresses much like a video game. There is a weapons progression that you would typically find in a game like this, he starts off initially finding a pistol, then a shotgun, and eventually a semi-automatic assault rifle. There are even a few instances where the camera shifts to the first person perspective of Bryan and felt like the POV in a FPS. There are many scenes that feel like levels of a game, particularly when it comes to navigating through Raccoon City to the final level, so to speak. But also, early on, everything up until the farmhouse felt like it could have been the opening prologue for a game. I could almost picture a prompt coming up on screen saying, “Press L1 to aim” as the game teaches you its controls.

If the original franchise felt like a poor cross of Mad Max meets Underworld meets Dawn of the Dead, then this reboot feels like The Thing crossed with District 9 crossed with a movie about a character having to make a nearly impossible journey (1917 or Children of Men, maybe?).

While there are a lot of creative directors out there right now making horror movies, Zach Cregger as maybe the most successful at creating commercial horror for the masses. With its atmosphere, pacing, tension, and body horror, Resident Evil is easily the best movie made based on the video game franchise and a promising reboot for the movie franchise.