The first-person shooter presents a specific translation problem for cinema: the spatial logic that makes a game feel urgent (the player's sightline, the gun in frame, the limited peripheral awareness) collapses without careful handling. Zach Cregger's "Resident Evil," now in theaters, works that problem directly, building tracking shots and first-person angles around Austin Abrams as Bryan, a medical courier delivering what he believes is a vital organ to a hospital in Raccoon City.
Bryan is not the franchise's prior protagonist. For years, the "Resident Evil" film series ran on Milla Jovovich's character Alice, a gun-slinging lead with a zombie body count in the thousands, under director Paul W.S. Anderson. Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten, who worked on the more recent "John Wick" installments, discard that template entirely. Bryan cannot reliably find the safety on his weapon. The casting of Abrams is a deliberate swing: he had not anchored a franchise release of this scale before, though audiences know him from "Euphoria," "This Is Us," and Cregger's own 2025 Oscar-winning "Weapons."
Where the franchise mechanism shifts
The Umbrella Corporation's lab leak of a virus, which transforms organisms into monsters, provides familiar plot machinery. What changes is the protagonist's competence level, which pushes the film toward suspense rather than action spectacle. Cregger, a fan of the original game, blends horror and gallows humor; Abrams supplies the comic register that makes the combination hold.
The production gap from the Anderson-era films is visible in the below-the-line roster. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, an Oscar nominee for "The Martian," handles the visuals, alongside a score from brothers Hays and Ryan Holladay and editing by Joe Murphy. All three worked with Cregger on "Weapons" and on his solo feature debut "Barbarian." Supporting roles go to Paul Walter Hauser ("Richard Jewell," "I, Tonya"), Kali Reis ("True Detective"), and Zach Cherry ("Severance").
Three films into his run, with "Barbarian," "Weapons," and now this, Cregger sits in the early-streak company of Jordan Peele and Yorgos Lanthimos. The Christopher Nolan comparison, where audiences show up for the director over the property, is where the trajectory points if the streak holds. "Resident Evil" is rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, and language throughout. Running time is 1 hour and 30 minutes. It is in theaters now.