Resident Evil Review: A Franchise Reboot With Real Jokes and Real Teeth

Yes, Resident Evil is worth watching, and it is worth the ninety-five minutes it asks for. Zach Cregger's reboot is the first film in this franchise built on horror instead of noise. Austin Abrams carries it with a performance that is funny, frightened and completely physical. The last act gets away from the director. Everything before that is a real thrill ride.

Spoiler-free verdict: Watch it. A 95-minute horror comedy with creature effects you can feel, an Austin Abrams performance running on panic and pratfalls, and a body count that earns its scares. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 96 percent from 300 critic reviews. You need no plot summary before pressing play.

What Resident Evil is about

Bryan Hodukavich (Austin Abrams) is a medical courier and his shift is over. His girlfriend has just told him she is pregnant. He takes one more run anyway, up a mountain road in a snowstorm, in a car with no chains on the tires, carrying a Schedule A package he assumes is a human heart. The drive does not go the way he expects.

On the road he hits a woman who steps into the snow. He gets out, finds her lying in the woods, puts her in the passenger seat, and is pulled over by a deputy sheriff who offers to help. Then the night starts. Twenty minutes in, Bryan is on foot in a blizzard holding a shotgun he has never fired, and the film has laid out its grammar: a run of self-contained missions, each one a location to cross and a problem you get one attempt at.

The games live in the structure rather than the lore. Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com spotted the props, an old typewriter in an upstairs room and a green plant in an abandoned car, which are save points and a health pickup. Jesse Hassenger at The Guardian caught the premise exactly, a man dropped into a video game before learning the proper controls, and noted the detail that sells it: by the time his life has been endangered several times over, Bryan is complaining about his wet socks.

Wikipedia's lead calls it the eighth live-action Resident Evil film, and it does not need the other seven to work. The story is a Raccoon City story with the lore kept at arm's length: a pharmaceutical company, a laboratory, and an outbreak caused by a serum designed to make organisms evolve faster.

Cast and performances

Abrams is the reason the film works. Tallerico called it "a fantastic piece of work, the kind of physical acting that often doesn't get enough credit", and said that Abrams does not turn Bryan into an action hero but an ordinary guy trying to do something important. Hassenger put it in terms of charm, describing Abrams as carrying "a Campbell-ish charm, even in the face of his character's repeated blundering, as well as an everyman relatability...". Owen Gleiberman at Variety noticed the shift from the actor he saw in Weapons, and wrote that "His new 'Resident Evil' is different, and much better, than the other 'Resident Evil' movies", a "creepy-crawly squishfest that takes its time and has a weird innocence about it".

Around him, Zach Cherry plays Carl, Paul Walter Hauser plays Paul and Will Merrick plays Dave, the three Umbrella scientists waiting on the package, and Kali Reis plays Maxine, an Umbrella enforcer. Johnno Wilson plays Officer Wilson, the sheriff Bryan meets on the road.

What works

The creature design. The dog that pushes its head through a barn wall and then splits open like a flower is the image the film sells itself with, and it is wet, physical, and built to be looked at. Brian Tallerico pointed out that Cregger's approach is not straight jump scares but "unpredictable surprises built around creatures that aren't quite human", and compared the effect to riding in a truck with Large Marge in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. On the photography, Tallerico noted that the creatures keep coming in and out of the light and that the cinematographer, Wolski, finds an aesthetic that is not overly oppressive.

The tone. William Bibbiani at TheWrap put it as well as anyone: "It's a great movie. It's an explosive horror experience which, unlike every other 'Resident Evil' adaptation, captures the strange dichotomy of this popular video game series. It starts out terrifying, gradually becomes ridiculous, and totally gets away with that tonal shift." The picture is funny the way the games are funny, in the middle of the danger, and it never apologises for the switch.

The running time. Ninety-five minutes, with no padding and no slack. Gleiberman called the result, in his phrase, sweetly executed escapist trivia, with a relatability that is unusual for the series.

What doesn't

The last act. Tallerico wrote that "The final scenes also feel like they get away from Cregger a bit, clunkier than the rest of the movie. He seems to have way more fun setting up the chaos than being forced to conclude it, a complaint some levied at his first two films as well." Hassenger heard the same wobble and judged it more gently, writing that "Cregger only falters in the tail end, and it's more a sin of omission than a big misstep."

The length, where the critics split. Tallerico also thought the picture could have been a bit longer, and that the connective tissue between set pieces could be sharper.

The girlfriend. The pregnancy that hangs over Bryan is the one thread with no payoff. Hassenger found his attempts to be supportive of her lamentably weak. The subplot asks the character to be a man who is ready for a child and then never tests it.

What audiences say

All figures checked on October 21, 2026. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 96 percent from 300 critic reviews, with a 90 percent Popcornmeter from more than 10,000 verified ratings, and its critics consensus reads: "Packing unforgettable scares into a sleek runtime while Austin Abrams' crack comedic timing provides crucial levity, Zach Cregger's Resident Evil is a propulsive tribute to the pleasure and terror of playing a truly spooky video game." Metacritic has a Metascore of 79 from 51 critic reviews, labelled Generally Favorable, plus a user score of 7.4 from 804 user ratings. IMDb has it at 7.6 out of 10 from 111,000 ratings. Letterboxd's member average is a weighted 3.75 from 1,599,062 ratings, with 776,456 written reviews. TMDB has it at 7.3 from 1,008 votes.

Letterboxd's 3.75 is the number to sit with, because it is the one measure that disagrees with the room. Critics are close to unanimous and the large audience sample is not. Read it as a franchise split: the game-literate audience recognises what Cregger is doing, and the rest of the audience rates the ninety-five minutes.

Box Office Mojo's figures, read on October 21, 2026, put the film at $148,990,438 domestic and $361,690,438 worldwide, from a United States release on September 18, 2026 that opened with $60,152,878. Wikipedia's summary of the same records gives $362 million against a $75 million budget and calls it the highest-grossing Resident Evil film. It premiered in Los Angeles on September 15, 2026, played the 21st Fantastic Fest on September 17, and was shot for IMAX.

Where to watch Resident Evil

There is no streaming offer in the United States. JustWatch, which checked 376 streaming services on October 21, 2026, lists the film as currently in theaters with no rental or purchase option online, and the only thing it will sell you is a Blu-ray from Amazon DVD / Blu-ray, priced at $29.99. TMDB's United States watch provider list is empty. The certificate is R. The run time is 95 minutes, which Rotten Tomatoes and JustWatch both round down to 94.

Current availability, cast details and member reviews sit on our Resident Evil streaming options and member reviews page.

Verdict

Is Resident Evil worth watching? Yes, as a horror movie with a comedy running under it, and not as a franchise instalment that owes you continuity. Cregger took a name with a bad history and built something with craft under it: a courier who cannot shoot, a farmhouse dog that splits open, a single night that keeps escalating. The critics are right that the last act is looser than the rest, and the audience numbers are right that the picture asks for more patience than the poster suggests. Both are true. Wikipedia's summary records the film as the highest-rated video game adaptation on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and Austin Abrams is the reason.

Spoiler warning: the ending of Resident Evil

Bryan makes it to the Umbrella laboratory in Raccoon City General Hospital with the package, which turns out to be a stabilizer the scientists need to develop a cure and hand to the National Guard. The bite he took in a tunnel earlier is the problem. While the lab starts working, mutant appendages burst out of his body and begin killing and consuming the scientists, and Bryan pleads for the cure as it happens to him.

He succumbs to the infection and kills the last scientist in the room. The cure goes over the edge of the rooftop. Fully mutated, Bryan roars as National Guard helicopters arrive.

Before the lab, three other things decide the night. The infected couple he shot in the farmhouse fuse together with tentacles and become the amalgam that hunts him through the sewers and up the elevator shaft, where Bryan forces the acid-vomiting patient to spray the thing that is chasing him. He escapes onto a ruined skybridge, barricades the door, and spends his last bullet shooting the barricade so the pursuing mutants fall onto the amalgam and take it down. And Paul and Maxine, the two Umbrella employees who pull him out of the farm, are lost along the way. Maxine is killed by a mutant in the city and Paul is absorbed into the amalgam.