This franchise has spent nearly 30 years inspiring video games, movies, TV shows, and countless nightmares. Resident Evil has also had a surprisingly complicated relationship with Hollywood. The new Resident Evil movie seems to have solved that problem by doing something totally Hollywood. Instead of adapting any of the games’ stories, it made one up. It doesn’t adapt any game’s protagonist-centered storyline, but it does take place within the mythology and circumstances established by the games—particularly the Raccoon City outbreak—and extensively borrows their gameplay vocabulary.
That sounds like a recipe for an unfaithful adaptation, and on the surface, it absolutely is. But there’s a strange contradiction at the heart of Cregger’s movie lurking like a hidden zombie. And it might be one of the most faithful adaptations when it comes to capturing what actually makes the games work. Rather than adapting a particular game, Cregger has adapted the experience of playing one.
If you went into the new Resident Evil movie expecting to see a familiar game character, you might be surprised by just how little of the games’ actual stories Cregger uses. Instead of a familiar face, the main character is a relatable everyman. Bryan’s journey through the outbreak is completely original. That’s a pretty significant departure for a franchise that has decades of established characters and mythology to pull from. Even the previous Resident Evil reboot, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, attempted to combine recognizable plots from the first two games into one cinematic story. Cregger instead goes in the opposite direction. He’s not interested in telling audiences a version of something they’ve already played.
That doesn’t mean the movie ignores the games entirely. Far from it. The creatures, weapons, environments, and familiar touches are still there, but they’re being used to construct a new Resident Evil story rather than recreate an old one. And that distinction is important because Cregger isn’t trying to make audiences wonder what happens next in a game they’ve already played. He’s trying to make them wonder whether Bryan is going to survive the next few minutes. And apparently, he’s already pitched a new horror movie during a fight between the Batman and Joker.
The new Resident Evil movie does one thing extremely well. And it accomplishes something that can be surprisingly difficult to translate from a video game to a movie. The games aren’t scary simply because they contain zombies and giant monsters. They’re scary because the player is constantly vulnerable while trying to survive at the same time. And there’s already a new Resident Evil game on the way that continues the tradition.
The original game could make opening a door terrifying. It could turn finding a handful of bullets into a genuine victory. It could make a seemingly ordinary hallway feel dangerous because you had no idea what was waiting around the corner. You had to pace yourself, explore, solve puzzles, and manage your supplies. The new movie can’t put an actual inventory screen in front of the audience, but it can recreate that feeling.
Several critics have also noticed how much the movie borrows from the language of video games. Cregger gives the characters time to move through unfamiliar spaces instead of rushing from one action scene to the next. The camera stays with Bryan as he explores, letting the audience discover new areas and threats alongside him. That makes the movie feel less like a traditional horror movie and more like a game unfolding in real time. The pacing also helps sell that idea. Quiet exploration can suddenly give way to complete chaos, before the movie slows down and starts the process all over again.
That’s where Bryan becomes so important. He’s not an established action hero who already knows how to handle every monster thrown at him. Bryan is the audience’s entry point into this world. His lack of preparation becomes part of the story’s tension. The movie’s progression also has a distinctly game-like quality. There are various objectives, obstacles, limited resources, strange locations, and increasingly bizarre threats. The movie works because it recreates the experience of being trapped inside a Resident Evil game. It’s even gone so far as to introduce two new monsters that seem inspired by other video games.
So, beware the sequel. Now, Hollywood finally found the right way to break the franchise out of its own adaptation curse. That means more zombies incoming. Now let’s just hope there’s still room in the inventory—or a red barrel nearby.
