“Hey, you got time for another run?”
That’s exactly what it felt like getting the invite to screen the new Resident Evil. Lately the franchise has been on a rather steep decline. The 2021 film Resident Evil: Welcome To Racoon City didn’t even register as a blip on the box office radar. There was the television series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness that didn’t light up too many streaming hits. But I was intrigued that the new film was directed by Zach Cregger, who had a pretty good sleeper hit with Weapons, and he was reteaming with that film’s Austin Abrams. A little confession before I go on any longer. I love video games, but somehow I managed to never play a single Resident Evil video game. Not sure how that happened. It wasn’t intentional. I just never got to it. I did see all of the films from director W.S. Andersson and his wife Milla Jovovich, and, for the most part, I have enjoyed the film franchise. Hard to believe it all started with the first game title 30 years ago, and there’s already been so much of the franchise that’s come and gone. What possible new and clever idea could Cregger bring to the table? Yeah, I’m a pretty big cynic. What I saw actually took a little time to digest. It’s not a great film, and it’s certainly no Weapons. What it is happens to be a somewhat fresh angle for both the franchise and the general video game to movie genre. It entertains. There’s quite a few well-timed laughs, and yeah, it’s got some intense horror genes in there, but the funny thing is that I hardly noticed any of those points while I was watching the film. I was too busy taking the ride. Time to ask questions later.
Austin Abrams plays Bryan, who is a medical company courier. I actually have a friend who did this job for years out in Arizona, and it sounds like a pretty tedious job. Today is going to be different. Bryan is not the brightest tool in the box, and he’s already in trouble with his girlfriend, Michelle, whom we only hear over bad connections on the phone. We hear enough to know that she’s pregnant, and Bryan isn’t saying any of the right things. He promises to come right home and have that conversation, but Bryan doesn’t really want to have that conversation at all. He appears to be saved when he’s offered a last minute run that will pay extra. It’s a big delivery that has to get to the hospital in Raccoon City very quickly. Bryan, along with the rest of us, figures it’s a heart or a liver or some other life-saving organ. He takes the job even after being warned it’s mountain roads in snowy conditions, but Bryan lies and professes to have it all under control. The truth is he has a crappy car, and he’s slip-sliding all the way up that dark, cold, and icy mountain road.
So this film is pretty much being set up very much like I would imagine a video game, but with better graphics. He’s given a mission, and as he sets out he encounters a series of challenges that get harder along the way. He hits a strange woman who is out there in the middle of this isolated road and decides to try to get her to the hospital. No cell service, so why not? He’s not quite aware enough to notice what we do notice. She’s not exactly acting very “human”. Of course, she’s a zombie, and she’s reaching for him as he drives, so now he’s swerving even more, attracting the attention of a cop who stops him, gets killed for his trouble, and leaves Bryan trying to find another way to his mission’s end. He meets increasingly strange creatures, including this rather growing snowball of a body creature that picks up more bodies as it rolls along like a snowball, only with teeth. so Bryan navigates these “levels” and reaches the hospital where even more challenges have to be navigated to get to the scientists at the top floor. Now Bryan’s been bitten. We all know what that means, so when it’s time to face the final level boss creature … it might be Bryan himself. But what if he’s been carrying a cure? Trust me, it all goes wacko from there. In the end I felt like maybe I’ve been playing the game. Perhaps audience members who have played that game might even get more of that vibe. I can’t report on that.
Here’s the real thing. Bryan might not be too bright, but he’s an everyman. We all can relate to him, so we’re kind of cheering him on, even if we’re also slapping our heads because we get stuff Bryan appears oblivious to. Along the way we don’t get a great variety of creatures. I’m somewhat jaded from the big look of the older film franchise. This one goes back to basic building blocks, and there isn’t anywhere near the scope you might be used to here in both the films and the game franchise. It’s not a bad thing, as this starts to feel like an old Sam Raimi Evil Dead film with a poor man’s Bruce Campbell. It’s truly a back to simple basics here. There are some “money” shots for the climax, but the film runs against the bigger and bigger expectations and in the end leaves us with something simple enough to truly enjoy the franchise all over again. At least that’s what I felt. Your mileage may vary … by a lot. The ending is much too abrupt, but the cinematography is pretty awesome thanks to one of Ridley Scott’s go-to cinematographers, Dariusz Wolski. So while it’s back to basics, that doesn’t mean it can’t still look awesome.
Cregger and Abrams, it appears, are a great team. Will they be the next Raimi and Campbell? Anything’s possible, and with Weapons and now a new Resident Evil film under their belts, the sky’s the limit. It’s a reboot, and it’s a new way of looking at not only the franchise, but this kind of a film. You don’t have to spend a billion bucks on f/x. Well … OK … maybe a few million. Still, focusing on the character and story and letting them actually tell you a story? “It seems like it’s kinda important.”
