Film Hedonist

First, Barbarian put Zach Cregger on the map, then Weapons proved it wasn’t a fluke. After that, he took on a job that would make most directors nervous. No audience is more ruthless than gamers. They’ve sat through enough failed adaptations to expect the worst, and they want it right on the first try. And Cregger chose Resident Evil, a franchise with a long history of mediocre screen versions.

He could have gone the way of the directors before him. Instead, he played the game differently: when you adapt a game, make it feel like one.

I’m a little ashamed to admit I wasn’t planning to see this in a theatre. Then I came across an interview where he explained, in painstaking detail, that he wanted to capture more than the “atmosphere” of the Resident Evil universe. He wanted to capture the experience of playing: what a player feels in the middle of a run.

I knew I had to see it. He wasn’t lying.

Playing it like a game

The film borrows the language of the games themselves. The point of view keeps shifting. Sometimes we’re in first person, and sometimes the camera follows the aim and the target. The classic mechanics are all here, from obstacles to ladders and everything in between. There’s a whole arsenal to choose from, locations that work like memorable levels, and excellent monsters. Even the camerawork and lighting recall survival-horror games. In the best sense, it feels like watching a game from inside the game.

An ordinary man in Raccoon City

The story runs alongside the events of Resident Evil 2. Bryan is a medical courier, about as ordinary as a person can be, and he gets through his night in Raccoon City without false heroics or main-character luck.

Austin Abrams has established himself as an actor you trust implicitly, whose small moments stay with you long after the scene ends. His Bryan is out of his depth but quick on his feet, real and vulnerable. His wits sometimes fail him, which makes his reactions believable. You always understand his reasoning, and that makes it easy to stay on his side.

The locations keep changing, so the film never drags. The background characters are fleshed out enough to add colour to their scenes without taking time from the main story.

If you’ve been missing a compact action horror film with a likeable lead whose choices make sense and whose fate weirdly does matter to you, Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” is the one.

And it has an ending that actually ends.