The new Resident Evil was directed by Zack Cregger, and it is a huge commercial and critical success.
It's now the highest-rated video game movie with a 97% average.
It's outperformed the first RE movie from 2002 by Paul WS Anderson.
Resident Evil 2026 is directed by Zac Cregger who was part of the very influential Whitest Kids U'Know sketch comedy show.
He directed and starred in his first comedy film Miss March in 2009 alongside fellow WKUK member Trevor Moore. The film was not well received
He ventured into horror with Barbarian(2022) which was fairly successful gaining plenty of indie-buzz, and followed it up with Weapons(2025) which was an even larger critical and commercial success.
Resident Evil is kind of important to me...
My 2 hour Playstation documentary starts off with Resident Evil 2 for a reason. It was the first game I ever saw played on the original Playstation. I was 9 or 10 years old, and already a huge fan of horror films because of my mother.
Looking back, I realize that I was probably a bit young to be obsessed with horror, but seeing RE2 changed video games for me.
Before then, they were just video-games. More like an arcade machine, a novelty.
I saw the original Resident Evil in 2002, and I was very dissappointed. But everyone else loved it at the time, and tried to convince me why it was good. Over time they all changed their minds, and eventually admitted that series was garbage.
I Really Wanted To Love This Movie
It's a franchise that I have strong feelings about, and Zac is a creator I've been a fan of since I was a teenager. I even liked Miss March.
But this is NOT a Resident Evil movie.
This was Constantin Film needing to use the RE IP in film to retain their rights to it.
Zac wrote most of this as his own original idea, and then he was approached by Constantin Film. He then adapted this loosely to fit into the Resident Evil universe by incorporating the setting of Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corporation.
They never even specify that the creatures are created by a virus.
And this was a smart move by Constantin Film because this movie is a smashing success, and I assume that Zac got a better deal, or a larger budget than he could have otherwise gotten.
Which is odd since he's had two successful films from his own writing/directing. He however did have a co-writer for this film.
The Good:
This film is executed in a pretty competent way.
The cinematography particularly in the opening incident is very good.
It's set in Winter with a snowstorm, and the police lights bright red and blue strobe over everything covered in white is very good looking.
There is a lot of comedy, and sometimes it works well.
There is one very very well-executed jump scare.
The Bad:
There is far too much comedy. The film never seems to take anything seriously, and the characters reactions to what they are seeing never seem realistic. You never feel they are experiencing genuine terror because they have quirky attitudes, personas, and reactions.
E V E R Y O N E is incompetent and silly.
The main character, the Umbrella employees, the Umbrella scientists.
Everyone acts goofy/childish, and makes goofy remarks and jokes constantly. It just doesn't work for a serious horror film, and what's insane is Zac stated that after test-screenings he removed the majority of the comedy. That's hard to even imagine to be honest.
The second half of the film is badly executed, and it feels rushed or slapped together.
But most of all, this movie fails to capture the spirit of Resident Evil.
Many people will disagree with me on this I'm sure.
But Raccoon City doesn't feel unique in any way. It's just generic, and it was shot in Europe from what I understand.
The "effects" & manifestations of the virus are inconsistent, and not in-line with the first three RE games. It shows that this was written/conceptualized as a non-Resident Evil story.
The T-Virus or "Tyrant" virus is designed to make super-human weapons in the form of Tyrants in the lab.
In the games when it is released into the general population it turns human beings and dogs into brainless zombies that eat flesh. The dogs maintain their speed, but people become greatly diminished in their movement/abilities.
There are unique other variations such as Lickers, Hunters, Drain-Deimos, and many mutated monsters.
But this movie basically ditches all of that.
I'm not going to spoil anything here, but it's just not Resident Evil.
I truly think that as time goes on people will realize this was not a great film; much like they did with the 2002 film.