“Resident Evil” is for Streaming

Zach Cregger is a few things.  For one, he is the director of Resident Evil.  He’s also the acclaimed director of Weapons and Barbarian.  He was also born in 1981.  All of these facts are relevant.

Full disclosure, I am one of the very few people on this planet that did not like Weapons.  (Although even I have to admit the climax was pretty cool).  Thus, just like with Weapons, I found Cregger’s approach to dark comedy in Resident Evil to be off-putting and ugly.  If that sounds discrediting to you, then Resident Evil might just be for you. 

But it is also conceivable that someone who liked the comedy in Weapons might find the comedy in this movie to be less than stellar.  A lot of it is the main character Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, reacting to horrifying things with various curse words.  It gets to the point where you wonder if this film measures up to Scarface or Pulp Fiction in its use of profanity – though certainly not in its writing.  Much of the other jokes amount to our main character being inept in this situation, which is relatable but slows the film down considerably. Other jokes come from characters dying when they aren’t expected to die, which does subvert expectations in a positive way, but leaves the script with very few personalities to anchor the film around.  This means that Bryan needs to be a magnetic character on the level of Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken from Escape from New York. Instead, Bryan is a bit of a wet blanket, and ninety percent of his personality is mere bewilderment.  He gets one major emotional scene, but there is never any payoff for that scene, and it feels completely shoehorned into the film, clashing tonally with the rest of the picture. 

It probably isn’t a coincidence that this review has referenced multiple 1980s classics.  Resident Evil is loaded with cool ideas, mostly in terms of monster designs.  But those monster designs feel extremely reminiscent of past films, most notably John Carpenter’s The Thing, but also various works by David Cronenberg and Guillermo Del Toro, or at least similar directors.  One monster concept even seems to harken back to Alien.  None of this even takes into account the fact that Resident Evil is based on a video game series that has eleven mainline entries, twenty spinoffs, and seven films preceding this entry, not to mention various comics and novels, plus merchandise.  Cregger puts on a very impressive menagerie of bad guys for Bryan to try to survive, but none of it feels very original. 

Cregger’s Resident Evil commits other sins.  The film is dominated by white men – well, a white man, more accurately.  Because so many characters die so fast, there isn’t room for a diverse cast.  The most promising character was Kali Reis as Maxine, and I won’t say what happens to her, but if you’re reading this article you can probably figure it out.  Other diverse cast members spend mere minutes on-screen.

At the risk of spoiling, I think a trigger warning should be provided. This film also kills a dog, a little girl, and an entire maternity ward full of babies.  It’s not completely uncommon for horror films to dispense with fragile sensibilities, but there is a fine line between presenting the immoral and becoming it.

Finally, Resident Evil’s finality is absent.  Vague spoiler warning again, but this film provides no resolution to any conflict, or if it does, it provides it in the most morbid way.  More cynically, the film seems to be forced to set up not just a sequel, but as many possibilities for sequels as can be imagined. 

It is totally possible to enjoy Resident Evil, and it seems the vast, vast majority of people have.  Word of mouth on this film has so far been unambiguously incredible.  But these faults cannot be ignored.  It is a film that provides no emotional satisfaction, no deeper themes, and no wit.  It is a pale imitation of movies like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, or George A. Romero’s Dead zombie series.  It does provide thrills, but they are empty thrills.  In a year where horror films like Backrooms, Obsession, and Leviticus have challenged us, dated popcorn flicks like this feel like empty calories.