Resident Evil (2026)

The new Resident is Evil ;)

Zach Cregger's new film after the success of last year's Weapons and before, his feature debut with Barbarian (2022) is a Resident Evil reboot. Obviously he is a huge fan of the game which I've never played and I've been bored to death with the series, started in 2002 with Paul W. Anderson/ Milla Jovovich's Resident Evil(s). I know that George A. Romero was the 1st one supposed to do the film and his script and project was rejected back then. It looks like Cragger had full imunity -Carte Blanche-and a huge budget. It's also considerd to be perfect Game play movie, I'd skip that atribute as I don't play video games, but here comes asa quality and I could see how it moves like that, but transcends on the screen beautifully...

Austin Abrams (Weapons) as the clueless Protagonist is closer to Griffin Dunne in After Hours (and An American Werewolf in London) than to Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead. He's is a climsy blue collar slacker way out of his league ! Cragger makes it funny and ridicoulous too in his approach of the game as filmic survival body horror mixed with lots of comedic approach (it says it's been tamed down heavily on the humor!). Main References are John Carpenter's The Thing, from the soundscape to the monsters F/X (even the dog thing !), Sam Raimi (humor from Evil Dead 2 and 3), even a Fargo nod...

It's very dense and tense and relentless and it's exactly 90 mins. long, a rare case in which it could've been longer !

I love the ending and I heard mixed opinions about that, judge for yourself !

 Further assets: 

Great widescreen cinmatography by Dariusz Wolski, after his films with Ridley and Tony Scott. He shot it all in Czech Republic in the snow. 

For those who can see it in IMAX, the 2nd half is in  1.90 : 1(second half, IMAX version), 

for the rest 2.39 : 1

Great F/X work by Weta Digital. 

Effective and uber cool synth score by Hays and Ryan Holladay, who did also Cragger's Weapons and songs for Barbarian. It features a horn section that is both creepy and jazzy. You can listen to all of it here. the film concudes with The Kinks' Animal farm on the end credits. 

One of this year's best if not the best Horror flick in cinema, tie with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. 

To be seen on the Big Screen, with the best Sound !

4 out of 5, 8 out of 10 !!!