After his impressive debut with Barbarian and then the terrific and Oscar winning ‘Weapons’ surely for writer-director Zach Cregger making a film in a long running and fading franchise is a backwards step. We could not be more wrong. Cregger along with co-writer Shay Hatten are huge fans of the first person game and have taken the premise of Resident Evil and run with it quite brilliantly.
Resident Evil begins…
It’s something of a one man show with Austin Abrams as Bryan, beset with a girlfriend issue, whilst he works unsociable hours as a courier of organs for hospitals. But the offer of one more delivery for twice the going rate is an offer he takes and he drives through heavy snow to Raccoon City to make the delivery to the hospital there. Fans of the game already know this is not going to end well and so it starts with him accidently running down a woman on the blizzard beset roads and for him it’s all downhill from here. The pop eyed cataconic woman is the first sign that all is not right and when a cop arrives on scene things get worse when he offers to escort them to a hospital after which he will deal with Bryan’s driving offences.
Of course none of this goes according to plan and like the game this finds him on the run and hiding out first at a remote farmhouse where he is chased by a guard dog. But he’s soon on the run again trying to figure out what has happened with the answer given when Carl (Paul Walter Hauser) and Maxine (Kali Reis) pick him up and reveal that what’s he’s been assigned to deliver is an antidote to the infection that’s sweeping through Raccoon City turning the inhabitants into monstrous abominations and the make-up team and effects people have let their imaginations run riot and the DNA of John Carpenters The Thing runs deep throughout this to hugely enjoyable effect.
Shocking….
There’s a load of unforgettable imagery that takes in a multi limbed monstrosity in pursuit of Bryan and a Hellish blood soaked maternity ward. The set pieces are terrific – an infected population throwing themselves off roof tops ( albeit a gory variation on The Matrix Resurrections climax) and best of all an infected patient who vomits acid at Bryan trapped in an elevator. Occasionally switching to first person point of view Bryan is the Everyman trying to survive and overcome the seemingly endless obstacles and deathly scenarios he finds himself in.
This is a breezy and bloodily brutal 90 minutes that’s often unexpectedly funny and is relentless entertaining and for fans its full of Easter eggs too. For Cregger, in what is his third consecutive hit, makes him the director whose name alone will make his future films much anticipated events. His two previous films have featured on our favourite films of the year list and Resident Evil is likely to make it a hat trick.
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Here’s the trailer….
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