Resident Evil Review: Zach Cregger Throws Austin Abrams Into Hell In A Riotous Survival Horror

With Resident Evil, Zach Cregger builds one of the year’s most pin-sharp, nerve-rattling cinematic openings. It lurches between extremes amid an expert orchestration of unpredictability. Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a medical courier who’s having issues with his girlfriend, Michelle, over having kids. She wants an honest, direct conversation, but his deliveries keep coming in the way. He's not sure if he's ready for such a big change as parenthood. The film opens at a hospital. Amidst his efforts to get a delivery signed, he’s tapped to ferry a critical bag to Raccoon City. He’s cautioned that the location is far and the terrain snowy. But the pay is double. In just a beat, he agrees. However, shortly after, he realises things might be way harder than it seemed.

The roads are icy, hemmed on both sides by forest cover. Bryan’s car is barely fit for these conditions. Abruptly, a woman jumps right in front of him. He’s stumped first that he might have just killed someone. Bryan doesn’t flee. He goes looking. Cregger sets the tone in this early stretch with precision and impeccable control. Along with DP Dariusz Wolski, the director hones unnerving atmospherics on a desolate, snowy night. Red rear lights, icy gales and menacing stillness of the night combine to accentuate volatility. You get the creeping impression something might be lurking in a corner. Cregger stretches these intervals of dread with laser-like exactitude. He knows just how long you hang on in nervous excitement before landing a knockout shocker. This initial section in the movie, long before more grotesque, gnarly variants storm out, is its most heart-pounding. Cregger masterfully employs abandoned houses, the vast expanse of a field, seeming emptiness to disquieting effect.

Critical to this kind of movies is this perceptiveness in how much to linger, a smart usage of simple elements to crank up stirrings of terror that swing from faint to relentless. Cregger knows how to oscillate between the terrified anticipation and the ultimate reality. There’s a virus outbreak that’s swept in gross biological transformations. Soon, zombies, monsters and mutated creatures of all gooey shapes and forms put Bryan on a chase. Cregger makes no bones about the narrative’s survival-powered personality. You’re basically trailing Bryan as he steers past attackers in a landscape rimmed by abiding danger. The fun is coupled because this isn’t a guy who’s muscular, confrontational or prepared. But he’s a damn good hustler as glimpsed when he does take up the delivery task despite the warnings.

Abrams is an absolute hoot. Cregger trusts the ruffled charm of Abrams to almost singlehandedly pull the entire film through. The actor is as committed to the absurdities, the spiralling mayhem, as the director to the tone and architecture of this eponymous video game universe. Both are in deliriously good sync. Abrams never gets seduced to bring in any heroism. It’s an imperative ask. Bryan is sincere, well-intentioned and wants to do his job the best way he can. He’s just a regular guy in extraordinary, unforeseen circumstances. Even when the body count speedily climbs, his reflex is to deny it to himself that what he saw was real. But Bryan keeps going. He might stagger and fumble but he powers ahead, driven to deliver the shipment. Abrams fuels the bewildered hilarity of the film, his reactions a goldmine of memes-in-waiting. A lot of the running gags are centred around the slew of padlocks and Bryan’s absolute ineptness with guns. He himself confesses his experience of handling guns is only drawn from video games before groaning that it’s way too confusing in real life. Just as memorable is his expletive-wrapping responses to yet another nightmarish episode. He’s either confronting the dangers head-on or taking a straight turnaround when it’s too overwhelming. Abrams’ “Nope, Nope” reply mixes heightened alarm with peak comic relief. Watch out for every time when he attempts exploding a lock. The score escalates with mock-triumphalist drumming, deflated by a botched firing.

Admittedly, Resident Evil does get crowded as Bryan plunges deeper into Raccoon City. Monster-movie indulgences start showing up, prodding through to be an exhibitionist spectacle. The tentacle-reveal gains rapid wind. Cregger seems carried away by a need to go all out, a flashy and gory display of the infection’s worst effects. But these don’t bother so much for the film stays focused, visually neat and wholly immersive. Not all the emotional gestures to tie Bryan’s journey into his relationship’s key conflict flow. The placement of an infected little girl is more effective than a latter scene where Bryan just lets it all out. Abrams is stunningly vulnerable but the scene itself is a tad forced, entirely contrived to tease a sense of finality.

In Resident Evil, Cregger’s refusal of a clearer social anchoring of the horrors can be divisive. Nevertheless, this avoidance felt, at least to me, that it helped to whittle out any probable flab, fittingly affixing the mission to the very centre. The delight here is fully in the ridiculous and misshapen. Cregger and Abrams keep you locked in. Resident Evil whizzes through a remarkably concise runtime to a spectacularly loony climax. It’s a thrill to see a filmmaker raise the ante furthermore in the end, instead of taking the familiar lazy way out. Can Cregger direct a few more Resident Evil movies, please?