Resident Evil Review - I'm SHOCKED!

The first Resident Evil video game came out all the way back in 1996. That was 30 years ago. After all of these years, all this time, I'm happy to report that we finally have a Resident Evil movie. Besides the six Milla Jovovich films are basically the equivalent of the Fast and the Furious set in a zombie universe, another attempt at a live-action movie, a crappy Netflix TV show, some animated stuff, besides all of that, we have our first Resident Evil film. And once again, it has very little to do with the game. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad movie. I'm going to talk about the film in a spoiler-free review uh right now. Going into Res Evil, I was a little bit concerned. Res Evil is what us die-hard fans call Resident Evil for short, for several reasons. Number one, it's based on a video game. Video game movies are typically terrible. Yeah, we have our For every Mario and Sonic, we have, you know, everything else. Number two, it's a Sony movie. They have a very bad track record when it comes to films. For every animated Into the Spider-Verse, you have a Madame Web fiasco. You have a Morbin' time. You have a Let There Be Kraven situation. And the final piece of this puzzle is the fact that it's directed by Zach Cregger. For me, Zach Cregger's batting one for two. I hate Barbarian. I hate it. But I love Weapons. So, uh this teeter-totter's going to go one way or the other, folks. And so, with all that preamble aside to pad out the video, what do I think of this film? Well, I think it's damn near perfect. Bet you didn't see that one coming, Quicksilver. Yeah, I freaking love this movie. No cap. It's really damn good. It is so damn entertaining. I was talking with my buddy afterwards, my of course fictitious buddy cuz no one wants to actually be my friend. Who Who can blame them? We're walking out of the movie theater and there is a gaggle of folks outside just talking. It's a nice beautiful fall day outside, nice crispness in the air and you could just feel the excitement from these folks oozing, percolating off their bad ass. I turned to my buddy and said, "When is the last time you walked out of a movie theater and saw so much excitement?" And he without missing a beat said, "Well, Milani, of course." I said, "Oh, yeah, right. Milani aside, when's the last time you saw people so jazzed up about a film?" It just does not happen often. And this is an interesting beast to talk about because like I said from the onset, it has very little to do with the video game it's talking about. Yes, there are plenty of nods for video game fans. I myself have played a good chunk of the Resident Evil games, not all of them, but enough to be dangerous. I knew this was not going to follow any of the storyline whatsoever. We're following a brand new protagonist named checks notes Brian, I guess. I don't I don't remember his name ever being said in the movie. Maybe it was by his girlfriend the disembodied voice he talks to on the phone a couple times. Really, this is just a one-man show though. There are only a handful of people throughout this film, maybe five or six key characters that come and go pretty quickly. But this is the Brian Is it Brian? I guess. This is the Brian show. He plays a courier in this who is transporting some precious cargo over to Raccoon City Hospital. Raccoon City, the most video game named city ever to exist. Yeah, he's a runner, which I guess is just all the craze these days because I just watched a movie with a runner called Runner and I I another movie about a runner called The Runner. Does Hollywood think there's only like five professions in any given year? Regardless, he's going to leave the hospital, start heading down a snowy road, and all hell is going to break loose. And then the rest of the film is just non-stop breakneck speed from front to back. It's action-packed. It's funny as hell. It's got some great scares, a lot of jump scares, and pretty much every one of them was just perfection. Several times I was like, "Oh oh my oh my stars! Did you see that?" >> [laughter] [gasps] >> Did you hear me? You might have heard me say funny as hell and went "Do I got something in my ears? Did Adam just say this is a funny movie?" Last time I checked, the Resident Evil games had pretty much zero levity in them. They were not laugh-out-loud games. They barely had a chuckle to be found unless you were just kind of laughing at how ridiculous the plots got in those things. Umbrella just has endless amounts of everything. Oh, if you don't know Umbrella, they're the evil bad corporation that's always behind everything. Anyway, like I was saying, this movie's freaking hilarious. I laughed way more in this than I did that shitty new scary movie. This is actually the funniest film I saw in 2026. Not that the bar is that high, but my god, I was laughing constantly, and it worked. It worked so well. There was maybe one small slice of the film for about 5 minutes where I thought, "We could we could pull back on this. We don't have to go so silly with the back and forth exchanges." But outside of that, the movie perfectly marries comedy and horror. Every time you think our character is in a safe space, he's laughing about the situation, he's a zombie or some scary-ass nightmare creature pops out of nowhere, and we're off to the races again for another 5-minute section where our hero is scrambling with a gun or trying to pick a lock or just get the hell out of the room he's currently found himself in. While it narratively doesn't follow any of the games at all, there are certainly familiar scenarios he's going to find himself in and just little tips of the hat to the people watching that have played the games. Oh, there's a typewriter in a room. What purpose does that serve? Nothing but a wink and a tug. Oh, he opened the door and it went black for a second before the light went on. I understood that reference. There's plenty of little things like that sprinkled throughout the film. That's the bare minimum and that's not going to be enough for some people and I understand if you're a video game purist, if you really love that first story of Resident Evil, you know, skulking through the mansion and whatnot, this is not going to quench that thirst. All right, this is a very different type of flick. But on the other hand, I think the spirit, outside of the comedy, is very much there. It is a survival film. You are following one guy the whole time as he's constantly scrambling to get to safety, find other people that can help him out and get that life-saving heart or liver or kidney or whatever across the town into the hospital. Austin Abrams, who plays this character, Brian the name is. I'm going to keep looking cuz I just I can't believe that. I don't remember him saying his name ever. He is really damn good. He was great in Weapons as that douchey loser who was going around breaking into cars, selling stuff at pawn shops and and whatnot. Here he really gets to embrace that type of performance but done in a more likable way. He is so fun to watch and he is the complete opposite of your everyman type of character. Some folks are going to be annoyed, I suppose, by the man-be-pamby modern new gen type of guy who's a little bit timid, doesn't know how to use a gun, gets scared, cries at times, fumbles with things. I thought it was so damn well executed here. I never was annoyed by him. I was never frustrated by him. This is one of the rarest of rare films where the characters all make choices that make sense. I shouldn't say never. There was one or two moments where I thought, "There There's no chance in hell I would play this out that way." However, it's not near enough to throw me off from how great this is. And what I love about his character is he's not the cliché wimpy dude who just cowers away or or needs help or saving. No, he figures [ __ ] out. "Oh, I've never I don't know how to use a gun." Well, he still sure as hell tries to use it. And he's constantly updating his cache of weapons. He's constantly figuring out good ways to get out of scenarios. It was a breath of fresh air to be honest with you. And I noticed some parallels between this and Die Hard, especially later in the film, where we have our John McClane on one end and Die Hard, by the way, [ __ ] awesome. I love Die Hard. Who is your everyman character smoking a cigarette, cursing, having great one-liners while rocking a machine gun in a tank. Over here, we have your modern schlubby everyboy type who's home on a Friday night ordering a pizza for himself and watching reruns of Rick and Morty. Maybe that's just that's just maybe me. I could relate to this guy. He's still fighting off hordes of zombies even if he doesn't look very cool doing it. Even if he's shocked every time something horrific takes place. And even when he botches trying to have a cool one-liner afterwards. And speaking of Die Hard, this dude's dropping a lot of [ __ ] bombs all the [ __ ] time. He is swearing up a storm. Constantly muttering to himself, "Fuck out of the >> [snorts] >> [ __ ] this is so [ __ ] Jesus." He was giving me major Pesci vibes from Home Alone as he's muttering to himself, Forget it. Freaking skirt. Get a freaking Did I mention this film's funny as hell? I think I did because the audience was rolling throughout this thing. There's a ton of funny scenes in this because of how insane the situation gets and it just adds to those scares because it's constantly putting us on this roller coaster, keeping us guessing. Is this Am I going to be laughing here? I am laughing. Good. Okay, we're safe now. Everything's >> [screaming] >> And then boom. >> They hit you with another one, baby. Another thing I'm very pleased as punch to talk about is this movie is only an hour and a half, an easy, breezy, beautiful 90 minutes in and out. It does not overstay its welcome. It encourages more, but I am very happy where it ends things. It uses that R rating not only with the swearing, but with the violence. Lots of carnage, lots of blood, lots of gore, some really freaky things that they're doing. We have several scenes where I'm just giddy as hell watching the carnage unfold. >> Let's talk about production for a second. It's gorgeous. This movie is popping. It feels like a film. It feels like I'm there, especially in the earlier stuff. I can feel the crunches of the snow as he's going outside. My skin goosebumps up as the snow pelts down on the car and on the jacket as he goes into the woods. Most of this film looks very practical. Lot of real sets, lot of real special effects were going on. I know there's a large amount of CGI but the way it's filmed, the way it's framed up makes me believe it's there. God, just the way Kreiger puts the camera low around a cop car as the sirens are blaring red and blue, red and blue and you're not sure where the zombie is because we see our protagonist with the gun sometimes in first person view, another nod to the games. It's so simple. It's so effective and it so makes me rack my brain why it's so hard for other directors to figure this [ __ ] out. Music, another highlight for me. It's just percolating back there. It's simmering back there. It builds at the right times. It keeps you energized. It keeps you engaged. It's got a little haunt to it, a little bit of fear striking here and there. I dig everything about this movie. I'm so happy to recommend it. I was a little hesitant going in, but my god, what a what a what an achievement. It's honestly a bummer when I love a movie so much because I feel like then I'm I'm just shilling and simping for the thing. But you know what? When I love something, god damn it, I love something. And it is so rare these days. I'm watching so much slop all the time on Netflix, on Amazon Prime. Just throw me a bone once in a while. I just reviewed a Tyler Perry movie. I just reviewed two different films titled Runner. So yeah, Resident Evil, hitting me with the humor, hitting me with the scares, hitting me with the gore, hitting me with some good nostalgic hat tips, you bet your sweet ass I'm going to praise this thing. Weapons was in my top three last year, and I'm happy to say Crager, his batting average just went up a lot because Resident Evil, again, going to make my top three so far for 2026 pretty easily. I'm definitely going to go to it again. I plan on taking the whole family out for this one. Movies are expensive as crap, but I think it's worth it. Definitely want to celebrate this film. I want to see it get more in this universe by this director. That is a key ingredient here now. Don't pass the torch. Dear god, don't pass the torch. Let Zach cook. All right, there you have it. In a sea of mediocrity and outright garbage flicks, we have a winner. Let me know your thoughts. Are you excited to see this one now? Maybe you're you're more fearful because of some of the warnings I gave you that it's not following the narrative of the games, that it's very much its own thing altogether. Let me know in the comments. And also, if you wouldn't mind, please think of subbing to the show Adam Does Movies. Free charge, doesn't cost you a dime. And if you hit the notification bell and select all, then YouTube will know to recommend my videos in the future. And I don't abuse that. Every video I put out, it's the gold standard. All right, that's all I got. Hope to see you for the next one. And folks, in the grand 2026, we have the best video game movie of all time. We did it. You got a winner. >> [music] >> Thanks again for watching the video. If you didn't know, I'm a one-man operation here at Adam Does Movies. I also have a full-time job. I got a family to take care of. And I would absolutely love if you supported me on patreon.com/adamdoesmovies, like these beautiful people did here. These are the silver and gold members. There's also a bronze membership starting at $1, plus access to over 300 videos from the Adam Vault at any support level. I would really appreciate it. It's the best way to support the show. Hope to see you there.