Resident Evil
Shouting that Zach Cregger's RESIDENT EVIL is the best RE film ever isn't loud enough. It's the goriest body horror flick since John Carpenter's "The Thing" and the best video game adaption I've ever seen.
That's mostly a tribute to the fact that he's not trying to create a first-player game for the big screen. Cregger creates a hilarious, suspenseful, well-shot horror thriller that weaves in some incredible references to the game while carving out an experience very much his own.
I laughed out loud, along with our Dolby Cinema audience, so many times that lost count as the story unfolds, deliberately at first and then accelerating into real time madness.
Cregger has found his perfect every-man to center the story on. Austin Abrams (Weapons, Wolfs) is Bryan, a medical courier who's already having a bad night.
No one at a hospital wants to sign for the vital organ he's just delivered and his girlfriend has just told him she is unexpectedly pregnant.
He's already got a lot on his plate when he's asked to deliver a high priority delivery to Raccoon City Hospital. (uh oh)
Halfway there, he hits a woman who's standing right in the middle of the very snowy, secluded road (just where in the hell is this city anyway!?!).
Cregger immediately starts pouring on the suspense as Bryan wanders off into the forest to follow the footsteps of the woman that should have died from that car hit. Using the light of his cell phone and the limited arc of visibility it provides, Cregger and his team control your field of vision, ratcheting up the tension again and again.
Bryan decides to put the woman in his car and take her to the hospital.
But she ain't right.
Nope.
Not at all, generating big laughs.
Things begin to spiral out of control very quickly and the film never lets up, dragging you into many, many dark places that you really don't want to climb into.
Cregger has a fantastic cameraman for his blood soaked adventure. Dariusz Wolski (The Martian, Alien: Covenant, Dark City) elevates the material into a first class ride, splashing every dark corner of the screen with inventive angles and clever, upgraded visual references to its video game roots.
The music score, from the very first notes over the opening logos, pulls you in generates big scares and perfect chills. Composed by Ryan and Hays Holladay, who also wrote the music for "Weapons", they prove to be true sound artists, blending the orchestra with sound effects seamlessly.
There have been so many "Resident Evil" movies, dating all the way back to the original 2002 schlock fest, that could never surpass their b-movie roots, low budgets and limited talent of their creators.
Cregger gives the franchise a HUGE upgrade, delivering more class, visual invention and humor in the first twenty minutes than all it's predecessors combined.
I LOVED the special effects. It made me recall the first time I saw John Carpenter's "The Thing" in 1982, on its opening Friday night. The body transformations and absolute violation of the human form by an outside organism were ground breaking, scary, gory and so over the top that mainstream audiences ran away from Carpenter's best horror film in droves. Only in the decades that followed did film buffs and horror aficionados come to appreciate the lightning in a bottle that Carpenter's groundbreaking film was.
Over and over again here, Cregger and his effects team deliver a deft blend of CGI and physically built practical effects. The $65 million budget looks like twice that on screen.
My favorite scene features the infected running on top of buildings on both sides of the street, jumping down onto the street below in attempt to kill Bryan. The sequence was shot using body bags filled with blood dropping from a great height for real, exploding all around Abrams as the actor ran through the set. It clearly makes a hell of a difference in the visual impact and Abrams relentless high pitched screams probably didn't have to be faked. It's a sequence that's sure to be part of Cregger's sizzle real for the rest of his career.
I also really liked how Bryan was pretty much me the first time I played the game in the late 90's. Sure I could find a gun, but that doesn't mean I knew how to use it!
Several other great comic actors lend their talents and bring laughs. Zach Cherry (Fallout, 72 Hours) is a scientist that we might not want the weight of the future of humanity riding on.
Paul Walter Hauser (I, Tonya, BlacKkKlansman) is an employee of evil biotech company, The Umbrella Corporation. He's as bad at handling dangerous bioweapons as he is with a car horn.
Cregger & Company escalate the monsters in the dark into some truly wild things I've never seen before. When was the last time I could say that??
Lean and mean at 90 minutes, RESIDENT EVIL is a blood dripping, gore oozing, laugh-out-loud, lightning paced, hide your eyes and try to escape what's on screen blast.
Cregger delivers again, all the way to a solid A.
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