Just as Evil’s residency in Hollywood had started to feel like one of those decades-long Vegas acts—less impressive for what’s happening onstage than for the fact that everybody involved is somehow still showing up—we’re handed a new act actually worth seeing. The kind where getting in might require buying a ticket instead of just flashing the receipt from whatever casino buffet you ate at that afternoon.
Resident Evil is finally a zombie movie that doesn’t require the brain-deadening infection to spread to the audience and so, naturally, plenty of people are already out for their pound of flesh. Early complaints have moviegoers pissed that a movie based on a game ends like a game, while gamers are pissed that a game adapted into a movie occasionally behaves like a movie. Everybody would apparently be happier if the thing simply failed in the exact manner they personally requested.
But that’s probably its greatest strength: the movie ends on a note every bit as unsettling as the franchise’s original release without bending the knee so completely to the early game’s narrative and stylistic choices that the whole production feels like it should have come with a “straight to DVD” sticker.
It’s creepy, gratuitously adorned with slime, and oh so long overdue. It’s also an important showcase for director Zach Cregger, who proves his directing talent extends to big-budget vehicles that weren’t also written by Zach Cregger. If that sounds like a minor revelation, it shouldn’t. It could be the kind we spend the next decade reaping the rewards from.
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