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Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
From the second Bryan (Austin Abrams) stumbles into his first abandoned house, this film makes it clear it isn't just borrowing the Resident Evil name. It's speaking the games' language. Explore a room upstairs and there, sitting quietly on a desk, is a typewriter the games' iconic save-point. Blink and you'll miss it, but if you know, you know. It's not the only nod either, but it's the one that had me grinning the most.
What really sold me on this film, though, wasn't the Easter eggs it was Bryan himself. He navigates the film like someone who's picked up a controller for the very first time and has to translate that fumbling, trial-and-error energy into real life. He's clumsy with a gun. He makes questionable calls, wandering off without fully searching a room, only to realise later he's walked past exactly the key or tool he needed. He tosses aside something "useless," of course only to need it minutes later. It's frustrating in the way watching someone else play a game is frustrating, you want to shout "go back, check the drawer!", except here it's dressed up as character, not player error, and it works brilliantly.
And that's before we get to the comedy. The games have always had this deadpan, slightly absurd dialogue, characters saying things out loud that really only make sense if you assume they're narrating for an audience only they can't see. Cregger leans into that completely. Bryan mutters, panics, and blurts things out exactly like someone who doesn't know he's being watched, and it's very fun. Add in a torch balanced on his gun, constant nervous scanning round corners, and a steady stream of "no, no, no, fuck, no" under his breath, and it plays almost like a Let's Play brought to life.
Visually, the film is having a lot of fun with perspective. It shifts between full first-person, a more conventional third-person view, and the classic Resident Evil over-the-shoulder shot and that variety works in its favour. The first-person moments hit hard but would be a lot if sustained the whole film (it edges towards motion-sickness territory), so cutting back to that familiar over-the-shoulder angle, gun still in frame, feels like a genuine homage rather than just a style choice.
Plot-wise, this is obviously never going to cover the full, sprawling Resident Evil lore in one film, and it doesn't try to. Instead it borrows enough to feel an authentic storyline in it's own right, without alienating anyone new. I went with my sister, who has never played a single Resident Evil game, and she had a great time without any prior knowledge to the franchise.
If there's a criticism, it's that the films short run time, 95 minutes, means that a couple of scenes feel a little rushed and disjointed, but honestly, thinking about it as I write, that could have been intentional rather than sloppy, like skipping through a cutscene until you're back in control meaning certain chapters of the game feel shorter than they are. Bryan towards the end of the film even finds himself on the sidelines for a stretch, watching events play out without really being spoken to, and it has exactly that cutscene-you-can't-skip feeling. Rather than take me out of the film, it pulled me further into that game-logic headspace.
Overall: a genuinely fun, funny, and surprisingly faithful love letter to the games, whether you've played every entry or none at all.
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