"RESIDENT EVIL" - REVIEW

Often I have had the experience of watching a horror film and felt something lacking. I have appreciated many scary movies without ever truly being scared. I understand intellectually the source of the fright, but have often found that what I imagined instead was far scarier. As a filmmaker/writer myself (and one who does not write horror), I’ve had the feeling that I could come up with something more messed-up and harrowing than that. Even the best filmmakers often only get close to the soul-churning panic that horror requires.

That was until I saw director Zach Cregger’s RESIDENT EVIL.

Now that I have finally seen something closer to what’s in my mind’s eye—in this case, some of the most aberrant, hellish nightmare fuel imagery ever put on film —I don’t quite know what to do with myself. Even now, two hours after our press screening let out, my heart is still racing.

Following BARBARIAN and the superb WEAPONS, Cregger (who co-wrote the screenplay with Shay Hatten) is 3 for 3 with this utterly propulsive, utterly repulsive race against time—the film runs a tight 90 minutes—and a descent into body horror hell. And happily, it still manages to be insanely fun (albeit a demented fun).

RESIDENT EVIL is, of course, based on the best-selling videogames and has been onscreen seven times before, with most of those films—competently made, but cold and humorless—starring Milla Jovovich and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. I couldn’t care less about videogames in general, but with Cregger’s rendition I was utterly enthralled.

Why is that? Cregger’s film follows Bryan (played by WEAPONS one-chapter scene stealer Austin Abrams, who appears in every single scene), a courier for a medical transport company who, in the anxiety-inducing wake of the news from his girlfriend that he may be a father, decides to take “one more job” for the night: to deliver a Priority A package, which could be a “child’s heart, or a drunk’s new liver,” to the hospital in Raccoon City, without stopping.

From that moment on, Bryan and the film do not stop.

Without giving anything away, what follows is an edge-of-your-seat creature feature in the tradition of John Carpenter’s THE THING with the urgency of Tom Tykwer’s RUN LOLA RUN. With stunningly smooth yet kinetic camerawork by the great Dariusz Wolski, we get a new set of circumstances every seven or so minutes, and we get clever compositions that resemble the experience of playing the game yourself, a storytelling weapon that Cregger always knows when to deploy without it ever becoming a gimmick. Each new scene is more tense than the last, reaching an absolutely disgusting, unbearably tense, laugh-out-loud climax.

How does this videogame adaptation succeed where others have failed? For starters, Cregger, who shot this film at the same time he was doing press for WEAPONS last summer, is clearly head-over-heels in love with playing the video games, and uses that love of playing them to investigate what a specific type of person would do in this situation, and then grounding the action in our world, even as its rules are rapidly, uncontrollably changing. Cregger’s previous sketch comedy skills as one half of THE WHITEST KIDS U’ KNOW also helps release the tension from time to time—but not by much. In fact, the comedy remarkably serves and complements the horror rather than detracting from it.

It also helps that, unlike most Cregger characters (including Abrams’s shifty, self-serving WEAPONS character of James the drug addict) whose bad decisions get them in greater trouble, Abrams’s Bryan surprises us by his depth. Bryan is a deeply good, honest and occasionally selfless person, whose good decisions get him into greater trouble, and the further he travels through the cold snowy night, the deeper his trouble goes. Because we, the audience, love Bryan so much, with his self-deprecating humor and his scared-shitless perseverance—AND because of the way the camera stays with him—we become him. We are him, and he is us (y’know, like in a first-person videogame). This is as written and as performed by Abrams, whom I’ve loved watching since 2015’s teen comedy PAPER TOWNS, and who gets one hell of a showcase in his first major lead role (he also takes the lead in WHALEFALL this season). Because  of Cregger and Abrams, we are deeply invested in Bryan’s survival, especially as he fights to deliver this package from Point A to Point B and retain his humanity as everyone else he encounters starts losing theirs, either through their choices of self-preservation (in one sequence, the priceless Paul Walter Hauser shows up to demonstrate just that) or literally becoming monsters themselves.

That was a heady paragraph, Movie Friend. What about the thrills, spills, chills and kills? It pleases me to say that for fans of the game and fans of the genre, RESIDENT EVIL delivers the goods: satisfying kills, exploding bodies, fast-moving action and infuriating obstacles that makes quick decisions not quick enough. This film is full-on, blood-soaked, jump-scare, hardcore horror that serves up plenty of visceral thrills and plentiful viscera. The blend of special effects makeup and visual effects is worthy of THE SUBSTANCE. The movie maybe isn’t saying much like THE SUBSTANCE did, of course. I’m not sure of the film’s Oscar chances beyond craft categories… but who cares? Spooky season is off to an early formidable start.

As someone who likes horror films, and loves a few of them, but doesn’t find it to be my go-to genre, I am always fascinated by zombie or creature horror because, unlike slasher or torture horror, zombie/creature horror gives me the comfort that it could never happen.

But now that I’ve seen what Cregger and company can bring to the real world, and the sequence that sounds us out of the theater?

I’m afraid to go to sleep.

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Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Association (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: www.mnfca.com