Resident Evil (2026) Spoiler-Free Review: The Most Faithful Resident Evil Movie Yet?
I’ve literally just walked out of Resident Evil, and as somebody who loves the games, I genuinely think this is easily the best Resident Evil movie we’ve ever had.
And the strangest thing about that statement is that this might also be the most authentic Resident Evil adaptation despite not centring Leon, Jill, Claire, Chris, or any of the characters we already know.
Previous adaptations have often treated “faithfulness” as recreating recognisable characters, monsters, costumes, locations and plot points from the games.
This movie seems to understand something more fundamental:
Resident Evil isn’t defined solely by its characters or storylines. It’s defined by the experience of actually playing Resident Evil.
That distinction changes everything.
Director Zach Cregger has openly talked about building gameplay elements such as padlocks, keys, keycards, healing items, ammunition and weapon progression directly into the movie because he considers them part of the “DNA” of Resident Evil.
Source:
https://rollingstonephilippines.com/culture/film/zach-cregger-resident-evil-interview/
He made a similar point when discussing the visual language of the games, explaining that he wanted the camera itself to remain tightly connected to the protagonist in a way that evokes both first-person and over-the-shoulder third-person gameplay.
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And you can feel that philosophy throughout the entire movie.
Rather than simply adapting things from Resident Evil, Cregger has tried to adapt what Resident Evil feels like.
It Understands the Wonderfully Stupid Logic of Resident Evil
One of my favourite recurring elements involves the protagonist encountering locks and naturally reaching the conclusion most rational human beings would:
Why don’t I just shoot it?
Anyone who has played these games knows exactly why that’s funny.
Resident Evil will happily give you a shotgun capable of blowing the head off a mutated biological nightmare, but apparently that same weapon is powerless against a padlock because the game has decided you need to find a specific key hidden somewhere completely unrelated.
The movie actually plays with that absurdity.
Instead of simply throwing Easter eggs onto the screen and waiting for fans to recognise them, it makes Resident Evil game logic itself part of the joke.
That is a much deeper form of fan service.
And importantly, the humour never feels like it’s mocking Resident Evil.
It feels affectionate.
It’s the humour of somebody who has clearly spent enough time playing these games to notice all the bizarre conventions that players stopped questioning years ago.
Cregger himself has explained that his background in comedy naturally feeds into his horror filmmaking because jokes and scares use many of the same tools: timing, expectation and suddenly subverting that expectation.
Source:
https://rollingstonephilippines.com/culture/film/zach-cregger-resident-evil-interview/
Interestingly, he also revealed that early test audiences actually thought the movie was too funny, leading him to reduce some of the comedy before release.
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The Verge picked up on the same relationship between the humour and gameplay, describing the movie as a comedy as much as a survival-horror film and noting how closely Bryan’s experience resembles somebody trying to navigate a Resident Evil game.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/996416/resident-zach-cregger-review
Even Finding a Weapon Feels Like Resident Evil
There’s a brilliant little moment where Bryan finds a shotgun mounted on a wall.
If you’ve played Resident Evil, that immediately feels familiar.
You walk into a room and suddenly:
Oh. Shotgun. Lovely.
Except finding the shotgun and having enough ammunition to actually use the shotgun are two completely different problems.
So now you’re searching completely unrelated rooms, checking cabinets, drawers and random corners hoping somebody has inexplicably left shotgun shells there.
That might sound like an insignificant detail.
To a Resident Evil player, it’s hilariously accurate.
Because the movie understands that resource management is part of the horror.
A monster is scary.
A monster when you realise you’ve got three bullets left is considerably scarier.
And the film takes that idea surprisingly seriously.
You Can Almost See the Inventory Screen in His Head
Another detail I loved was how Bryan’s arsenal gradually levels up as the movie progresses, almost exactly as it would in a game.
He doesn’t begin the story absurdly overpowered.
Instead, he gradually acquires better weapons as the threats escalate.
Each new piece of equipment therefore feels like progression rather than the screenwriter simply handing the hero a bigger gun because the third act has arrived.
It essentially recreates the classic videogame loop:
survive → explore → acquire resources → upgrade → encounter something worse.
GamesRadar specifically highlighted the movie’s use of “inventory progression” and increasingly capable weaponry as part of the way Cregger translates gameplay into cinema.
Source:
https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/horror-movies/resident-evil-movie-review/
But perhaps even more important is something incredibly simple:
Bryan keeps checking his ammunition.
Multiple times.
That detail matters enormously.
Resident Evil players are constantly doing mental arithmetic.
How many bullets have I got?
How many enemies are in this room?
Can I run past this one?
Do I really want to waste shotgun shells here?
Should I save the stronger weapon for whatever horrible thing the game is inevitably going to throw at me later?
Cregger has explicitly said that this was intentional. Before release, he explained that he wanted audiences to be conscious of Bryan’s health and exactly how much ammunition he has left, recreating the resource-management tension of the games.
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So when Bryan checks or counts his remaining bullets, it isn’t just a random character detail.
It’s effectively Resident Evil’s ammunition counter translated into human behaviour.
You can almost see the invisible inventory screen in his head.
It Even Understands the Ridiculous Ritual of Searching Rooms
There is something inherently funny about somebody experiencing a life-threatening emergency and still finding time to open every drawer in somebody else’s house.
But Resident Evil trains you to do exactly that.
You don’t walk into a room thinking:
“Does this room matter to the story?”
You think:
“There might be ammo in here.”
The movie understands this brilliantly.
Seemingly insignificant spaces become important because any one of them could contain ammunition, equipment, healing items or something else that keeps Bryan alive for another few minutes.
And that makes exploration itself part of the tension.
You’re not simply waiting for the next monster.
You’re watching somebody desperately trying to prepare for the next monster without knowing what it is, where it is, or whether he actually has enough resources to survive it.
That is pure survival horror.
TheWrap made almost exactly this distinction in its review, arguing that the movie may not faithfully adapt the storyline of a specific Resident Evil game, but that it is remarkably faithful to what playing a classic Resident Evil game actually feels like.
Source:
https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/resident-evil-2026-review-zach-cregger/
The Environments Might Be the Biggest Love Letter of All
What impressed me perhaps even more than the obvious references was the production design.
There were rooms where nothing particularly significant was happening narratively, yet I found myself scanning the screen because the furniture, lighting, architecture, corridors and placement of objects simply felt like Resident Evil.
That matters.
Resident Evil has always had a very specific environmental language.
Dim lamps.
Long corridors.
Overly elaborate furniture.
Rooms that somehow look almost untouched despite complete chaos occurring outside.
Suspiciously useful objects sitting conspicuously on desks.
Industrial areas filled with machinery, pipes and switches.
Medical environments that become progressively more disturbing.
Ordinary rooms that somehow feel threatening simply because you know something awful could be waiting behind the next door.
The movie repeatedly recreates that feeling without stopping to scream:
LOOK! THAT’S FROM THE GAME!
And that is the difference between merely inserting Easter eggs and genuinely understanding the source material.
Sometimes the movie didn’t remind me of one specific Resident Evil game.
It reminded me of being inside a Resident Evil game.
The Direction and Cinematography Sell That Illusion
This is also where Cregger’s direction and the cinematography really excel.
The camera doesn’t simply show us these environments.
It often feels like it’s exploring them with Bryan.
The framing frequently encourages you to scan the screen just as you would while controlling a character yourself.
You start looking into dark corners.
You notice doors.
You study objects in the background.
You begin wondering whether something might enter the frame.
Cregger has specifically talked about using a fluid camera that remains locked closely to Bryan’s perspective, shifting in ways reminiscent of both first-person and over-the-shoulder third-person gameplay.
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That approach could easily have become a gimmick.
Instead, it helps create immersion.
Corridors feel ominous.
Rooms feel deliberately composed.
The lighting constantly suggests there is more beyond what you can properly see.
And because the camera remains so connected to Bryan, discovering a new environment often feels less like receiving a traditional establishing shot and more like entering a new area of a game.
GamesRadar also noted the film’s use of videogame-inspired camera perspectives alongside its resource and inventory systems.
Source:
https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/horror-movies/resident-evil-movie-review/
The production design, cinematography and camera movement therefore all work together.
The sets don’t simply look like Resident Evil.
The movie teaches you to look at them like a Resident Evil player would.
That is incredibly clever.
Bryan Is Crucial to Why Any of This Works
Another brilliant decision is making Bryan an ordinary person.
Not an elite police officer.
Not a special-forces operative.
Not somebody who immediately understands how to efficiently deal with monsters.
He panics.
He misses.
He wastes things.
He makes questionable decisions.
Sometimes he reacts exactly like somebody holding the controller for the first time.
And that allows the film to recreate something previous adaptations gradually lost:
vulnerability.
Resident Evil was never originally about feeling like an unstoppable superhero.
A huge amount of the tension comes from understanding that you probably shouldn’t kill everything.
Sometimes getting through the room alive is enough.
Bryan being inexperienced therefore isn’t just characterization.
It serves the mechanics of the movie.
When he acquires a new weapon, it means something.
When he wastes ammunition, it matters.
When he finds himself somewhere unfamiliar, the audience is discovering it with him.
The Guardian similarly highlighted Bryan’s everyman quality and how his vulnerability separates him from the more conventionally capable protagonists associated with previous Resident Evil movies.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/16/resident-evil-reboot-movie-review
And THAT Is Why It Somehow Feels More Faithful Than Movies That Actually Used the Game Characters
This was the thing I found most fascinating.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, for example, went much further in recreating recognisable characters, locations and events.
Yet this completely original story feels considerably more like Resident Evil.
Why?
Because there are two different ways of adapting something.
You can adapt its content.
Or you can adapt its language.
Previous Resident Evil movies frequently borrowed the content:
Umbrella.
Raccoon City.
Leon.
Claire.
Chris.
Jill.
Wesker.
The mansion.
Recognisable monsters.
Recognisable imagery.
Cregger instead adapts the language:
Limited ammunition.
Weapon progression.
Exploration.
Inventory management.
Locked doors.
Keys.
Resource scarcity.
Searching unrelated rooms.
Gradually acquiring stronger weapons.
Environmental obstacles.
Increasingly grotesque enemies.
Weapons appearing somewhere convenient while their ammunition appears somewhere completely inconvenient.
And perhaps most importantly, that peculiar Resident Evil rhythm where something begins as genuinely disturbing and gradually becomes completely ridiculous, yet somehow, as a player, you simply accept it.
GamesRadar has also described this unusual relationship with the source material: rather than adapting a particular game or importing its central characters, the film attempts to reproduce the feel of playing Resident Evil.
Source:
https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/horror-movies/resident-evil-movie-game-differences/
Early critical reactions repeatedly focused on the same thing.
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That might be the smartest adaptation philosophy anyone has brought to this franchise.
Resident Evil Finally Understands Resident Evil
Yes, there are Easter eggs.
There are references.
There is lore.
There are objects, environments and details longtime players will immediately recognise.
But Cregger doesn’t seem interested in using nostalgia as a checklist.
Instead, he seems to have asked a much better question:
What are the weird little things that make somebody KNOW they’re playing Resident Evil?
It’s desperately searching rooms for ammunition.
It’s finding a powerful weapon and immediately discovering you’ve got almost nothing to put in it.
It’s physically checking how many bullets you have left.
It’s slowly upgrading your arsenal as the enemies become increasingly ridiculous.
It’s staring at a locked door while carrying enough firepower to destroy half the building.
It’s walking through an environment where the architecture itself feels like a puzzle.
It’s entering a room and instinctively thinking:
“Something horrible is probably in here.”
And it’s that bizarre mixture of horror, tension, camp, black comedy and absurdity that Resident Evil has somehow always made work.
That is why, for me, this is easily the best Resident Evil movie.
Not because it copied the games more closely.
Because it understood them better.
The Resident Evil movies have spent more than two decades trying to work out how to turn the games into cinema.
Zach Cregger seems to have realised that the answer was never simply to remake the games.
It was to make a movie that feels like somebody handed you the controller.
The One Thing Keeping It From a Perfect Score
There is, however, one thing preventing me from giving the movie a full 5/5.
Unfortunately, I just didn’t find it particularly scary.
The humour works, and much of it is genuinely clever precisely because it comes from the absurd logic of the games.
But I also think that same humour occasionally takes the edge off the horror.
There were plenty of moments where I was entertained, amused, excited or impressed by how accurately the film recreated the Resident Evil experience.
There were far fewer moments where I was genuinely frightened.
And that’s unfortunate because Cregger clearly understands the other half of Resident Evil too.
He has described the games as being built around slow, deliberate dread: walking down a dark hallway while outnumbered and knowing you might only have a couple of bullets remaining.
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That feeling exists in the movie, but for me it rarely crossed the line from tension into genuine fear.
Interestingly, The Verge arrived at something close to the same tonal observation, describing the movie as a comedy first and a nightmare second.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/996416/resident-zach-cregger-review
I would have loved just a little more dread.
A little more discomfort.
A few sequences where the film held back the joke and simply allowed Resident Evil to become properly terrifying.
Because visually and technically, the ingredients are absolutely there.
The direction and cinematography are excellent throughout.
Cregger stages these environments with tremendous confidence, the production design is packed with details that reward anyone familiar with the games, and the camera frequently makes you feel as though you’re navigating these locations alongside Bryan rather than merely observing them.
Even when the movie wasn’t frightening me, it was almost always visually pulling me deeper into its world.
So while I absolutely loved the film, and still think it is comfortably the best Resident Evil movie we’ve had — the fact that it never truly scared me is what keeps it from receiving a perfect score.
But in terms of direction, cinematography, environmental storytelling, understanding videogame mechanics and translating the actual experience of Resident Evil into cinema?
It absolutely excels.
★★★★ / 5