Zach Cregger's Resident Evil film delivers an entertaining horror-comedy by humorously capturing the clumsiness and panic of playing a video game, focusing on Bryan (played by Austin Abrams) to bring the gaming experience to cinema, and stands out as one of the best video game adaptations despite its absurdity.
Zach Cregger, director of Weapons and Barbarian, circles around Capcom's hallowed series, and the resulting horror-comedy chaos is lightweight but enormously fun.
Somewhere in the dreadful Doom movie, there's a section where the perspective suddenly snaps to first-person. "Look," it seems to say, "just like you playing the video game!" But Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil film understands, very well indeed, that this is nothing like me playing a video game. On the other side of the screen, I may be gliding through gloomy corridors in a digital space marine suit while monsters leap at my face, but I am absolutely not behaving like a space marine. I'm screaming; I'm grimacing, I'm swearing; I'm fumbling the controller and firing bullets into the ceiling. And yes, while I'll allow myself the occasional brief yelp of triumph, the power fantasy doesn't quite fully materialise.
I think that's exactly what makes Cregger's take on Resident Evil so enjoyable. It captures perfectly the joy of that clumsiness in video games, the ridiculous misjudged decisions, the misplaced overconfidence, and that can-do spirit that usually keeps us going in the end. Here, the player-surrogate character is Bryan (with a wonderful performance from Austin Abrams), a charismatic mess of a medical courier and ordinary guy who gets caught up in Raccoon City's T-virus outbreak on one unfortunate winter evening.
The journey begins in a busy hospital and, following series tradition, ends in a corporate laboratory, while taking in a number of familiar Resident Evil stops along the way, such as an eerily abandoned farmhouse, the city's zombie-infested streets, and a brief descent into the sewers. Cregger also structures his film like a video game; he sends Bryan off on a plot-free, action-packed adventure that unfolds almost in real time once the first objective is set, gleefully bouncing from enemy encounters to set pieces to boss fights and back again. There's even a scene where he rummages through a few drawers looking for ammunition.
Throughout all of this, Bryan bravely bumbles along with a resigned - and winning - characterization, unwittingly self-sacrificing - determination, monologuing with an almost constant stream of "fuck" and "shit." Oh, and he makes such exotically terrified grunts that I'm sure he's creating entirely new sounds. As someone who has just spent the last week playing Silent Hill: Townfall and emitting a similar stream of vocal diarrhoea, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be represented so accurately on screen.
In the wrong hands, this kind of meta approach would be terrible, but Cregger, who wrote the script with Shay Hatten, is arguably the right man for the job. He's already proven his horror and comedy chops with the magnificent Barbarian and Weapons, and his distinctive sensibility serves Resident Evil (a series that, despite recently managing to put on a more serious face, has always operated in a permanent camp register) extremely well. Much as I love the games and their pantheon of high-cheekboned heroes, their silly stories are B-movie quality at best, and I'm more than happy for someone to have a bit of fun with the series on the big screen.
And Cregger's Resident Evil is very fun; it swings wildly from jump scares and genuine tension to slapstick silliness, and while it's still unmistakably Cregger, it inevitably brings Sam Raimi to mind. I think Raimi's Drag Me to Hell is the pinnacle of horror-comedy and a masterful demonstration of horror tension management; it constantly undermines its scares with real jokes, then undermines those in turn, and each transition heightens the impact of the next. By comparison, Cregger's Resident Evil leans more on gross-out comedy than straight horror, but it still finds a rhythm that helps both halves hit harder. And there are many moments when they land, leaving you somewhere between an incredulous laugh and a breath choked off in disbelief (hello dog!).
Resident Evil may proceed with perhaps the weakest plot, but that balance is kept buzzing along by Abrams' endlessly likeable presence, a few silly running jokes, and a series of magnificent set pieces. In terms of the latter, Resident Evil has some treats. There are rolling creatures that challenge Arcadian's horse-mounted scares, an incredibly stupid car chase, the world's worst elevator ride, and a breathtaking zombie rain scene that's still impressive even if you've had it spoiled in the trailer (I really should have learned my lesson by now). Honestly, it's hard to pick a favourite. And throughout, there are those magnificent slimy body horror monsters: mostly new creatures, but still perfectly Resident Evil.
I mean, I had a great time. Cregger's Resident Evil film may not be every fan's cup of tea, with its abundant silliness, thin mainline, and lack of Leon, Claire and the others, but it's the best adaptation of playing a video game I've ever seen. And in its gleeful subversiveness - stubbornly and cleverly staying around the broader world of the Resident Evil series - I think Cregger captures the spirit of his source material better than most other game-to-film adaptations. As Bryan says at one point in a rare moment of triumph: "Video gaaames!"
