BIOHAZARD
Directed by Zach Cregger
Starring Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis
Released September 18th, 2026
Rated R
The best thing I can say about the eighth movie based on Capcom’s video game series Resident Evil is that it looks fantastic. The director of photography is Dariusz Wolski, who previously worked with Alex Proyas on The Crow and Dark City, Sir Ridley Scott on The Martian and The Last Duel, and Gore Verbinski on his Pirates of the Caribbean films. Though the entirety of Resident Evil takes place at night, the movie pops with color, from city buildings on fire to the flashing lights of a police car stranded in the alabaster snow. One of the worst elements of this disappointing film is the overwrought score by Hays and Ryan Holladay. Jarringly, their music rarely fits what we’re seeing on screen.
Directed by Zach Cregger, who co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten, the film follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier picking up one final delivery of the night. He’s tasked with taking a little icebox package to a hospital in Raccoon City, which is pretty far from his current location, but promises a larger payday. Bryan never knows what he’s transporting, but figures it’s usually a heart or other body part that could potentially save someone’s life. The drive to Raccoon City is dark and dangerous, with high winds and snowy conditions.
Bryan gets distracted trying to make a phone call and his car starts swerving on the icy road, which is why he doesn’t see the woman coming out from the surrounding forest until he hits her with his car. Panicked, Bryan exits the car to check on the woman. She’s in bad shape. Covered in blood, blankly staring at him and murmuring. He manages to get her in the passenger seat, planning to take her to the hospital he’s already traveling toward. Things get more complicated when the woman starts acting violently, and Bryan is forced to make some tough decisions to survive.
The beginning of the film effectively builds a good deal of tension. Cregger has proven with his films Barbarian and Weapons to be good at doing that, but here he doesn’t seem to know what to do with that momentum. For all of its jump scares, Resident Evil isn’t particularly scary. Though Bryan soon has to fend off mutated human monsters, the movie leans heavily into comedy and so Abrams is stuck in a can-you-believe-this-is-happening state of mugging for the camera.
Some of this is admittedly pretty funny, but to a fault. The jokes are too plentiful. Every scare sets up a joke reaction. It gets to the point where Abrams shouts “Video Games! Yeah!” The excessive humor really puts a damper on the tension. Abrams is charming and his performance anchors the film. You’re rooting for him the whole time. Not that there is any other option. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser have extended cameos, but there isn’t a big cast here and most everyone we see that isn’t Abrams is a mutated monster. Unfortunately, the creature designs are not memorable. Nor do these CGI creations look particularly real, which took me out of the movie.
If you’ve played any of the Resident Evil games, you’ll undoubtedly notice some nods here and there, especially when it comes to Bryan searching for weapons, juggling inventory, and the sequences that recall the first-person POV of the games. But since the film doesn’t feature any characters or adapt any of the stories from the games, I’m puzzled as to why Cregger and Hatten didn’t develop this as an original script. Perhaps they did, and Sony came calling with a paycheck. In any case, the eighth time is not the charm for Resident Evil, especially since this one has an all-timer of a bad ending. It’s an incredibly unsatisfying conclusion to a film that doesn’t seem comfortable in its own mutated skin.