Resident Evil (2026)
Last Watch Date - September 23, 2026
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
You may or may not believe this, but I actually went to a theater to see this! I took my two older kids (18, 17) and got some recliner seats at the Movieland cinema in Richmond. $71 for the three of us. Woof, that's a lot of money. I heard really good things about this and had planned on seeing it when it came out anyway, so was it worth the $71???
I knew NOTHING about this movie going in other than who directed it (generally not a fan of his) and the game series (generally a fan). I enjoyed the Jovovich RE movies despite them being more action than horror. I enjoyed the animated RE movies.
Let me say off the bat that this movie is a comedy. I don't care that it has horror elements, the strongest "feeling" of this movie is humor/comedy. It starts out goofy and ends goofy. The entire thing is goofy. This is actually fine by me as what I hate about Cregger's other movies is how they do a tonal switch between pure horror and absurdist comedy. If you start with humor and roll with it, that's fine. Cregger actually cut MORE jokes from this movie in testing as he said audiences found it "too funny." I think he should've just left them in.
In terms of its Resident Evil-ness, it's a mixed bag. It has some callbacks to games and scenes within games that I remember and appreciated. Creggers said he had wanted to base it more on the games RE2/3/4. I think I get his "parallel story" angle here and appreciate that he tried something new, but there are also some really. bizarre departures when it comes to the T-virus and how it affects people and other animals. Without giving anything away, there is one particular type of monster that appears many times in this movie that I have no recollection of anything even CLOSE to in the games/movies/media. Maybe I missed something, I don't know. I didn't like his choice there.
Ultimately, this movie is 90 minutes but had a story to fit around half that. Padding it out with potentially "tense" moments doesn't work when the movie is not tense. It becomes a little boring when you know another jump scare is coming but they try to build something up for a minute or two that has no pay off.
Still, it was a funny movie.
Recommended?
Tough to recommend. I guess if you like comedy-horror movies, sure. If you're a fan of Resident Evil, you probably won't like the tone of this or the non-canon choices.