Austin Abrams, from "Weapons," plays a medical courier fending off viral beasties in a throwaway horror film that surges into symphonic loopiness. One of the many splendid things about Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” is that it was a horror film made with humanity. It overflowed with majestic creepiness, but all the witchy stolen-child stuff was folded into emotionally suspenseful situations that Cregger interwove like a junior “Pulp Fiction.” (That’s part of why Amy Madigan’s evil crone had such nightmare resonance.) When a movie becomes as big a sleeper sensation as “Weapons” did, the director who made it can write his own ticket.
So when Cregger announced that his next movie would be a reboot of “Resident Evil,” I thought, “Really?” My reaction was: How utterly of this day and age to follow up a movie as remarkable as “Weapons” with a reboot of the most inhumane horror series of the last 25 years. There have been seven “Resident Evil” films (including the 2021 reboot), and obviously they come with a major fan base, but please! Without exception, they have been hyperviolent, hyperkinetic video-game zombie sludge, designed as depersonalized thrill rides for gamers (or just numb horror junkies).
I thought: This is what Cregger wants to do? But then I got over myself and said: Okay, fair enough, he grew up with the games and loves them, and he wants to take that sort of follow-up pressure off himself. He wants to unwind and make a piece of unabashed monster pulp that’s close to his childhood heart.
But what would a Zach Cregger “Resident Evil” movie look like? His new “Resident Evil” is different, and much better, than the other “Resident Evil” movies — it’s a creepy-crawly squishfest that takes its time and has a weird innocence about it. (At moments it reminded me of “Planet Terror.”) Cregger doesn’t stage it in the usual “relentless” video-game-movie style. He works in a more ambling and naturalistic way, and that’s there from the opening shot, as the camera follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier, into the hospital where he’s dropping off a vital organ, and he’s then handed another, even more important Schedule A package (he presumes that it’s a human heart, or something of that magnitude) to take to a hospital up in the mountains.
Austin Abrams, who played the homeless drug addict in “Weapons,” here seems a different actor. (That’s how good he is.) With tousled hair and a cutely abashed and fearful manner, he’s got the look and aura of an indie rocker from the 2000s like Mark Foster, but he also has a touch of the young Sam Rockwell about him. His Bryan is a winningly ordinary hero, not macho at all (there are moments he squeals in terror), and he’s basically on his own. That’s what makes this a video-game movie — not the tone, but the way that Bryan wanders from one increasingly outlandish danger zone to the next.
Let’s call it a sweetly executed piece of escapist trivia. It’s got a quirky relatability…for a “Resident Evil” movie. Bryan, without chains on his tires, drives up a treacherous farm-country road in the snowy night, which lends the movie a fairy-tale atmosphere.
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