The Resident Evil Movie Understands Video Games Are Ridiculous, and That's Why It's Great

Some very minor spoilers for Resident Evil (2026) follow:

Video games are ridiculous. The Resident Evil series is a perfect example of this. One moment you’re running in terror away from a comically oversized trench-coated tank of a man in a tiny hat; the next, you’re messing around with electronic chess pieces in order to open a door. These are completely alien situations that, somehow, these games make us feel compelled to navigate through rational thought. This is what Zach Cregger understands about Capcom’s genre-defining series so well. His Resident Evil movie knows that this is all ridiculous, and so the film has its lead, Brian, progress through its 90-minute rollercoaster just as we would if we had a controller in our hands. It’s a fantastic translation of the sensation that playing a survival horror game grants us, never forgetting to include every piece of glorious nonsense that comes with it.

Austin Abrams really is fantastic as Brian, a thoroughly normal guy thrust into a scenario he’s only ever seen on screens. “Video games!”, he shouts after solving a problem, almost surprising himself by the way video game logic has seeped into his mind and exploded into life in the real world. His original character is as close to a proxy for the viewer as you could wish for in a Resident Evil film, evoking the feeling we feel as players, rather than watching the events unfurl from the perspectives of established protagonists such as Chris Redfield or Leon Kennedy. That choice is the real masterstroke from Cregger, and it’s where so much of Resident Evil’s humour comes from.

When I visited the Prague set of the movie back in December of 2025 , the director told me, “It’s like if I were thrust into a Resident Evil video game. I’d be totally unequipped. I’m not good with guns. I’m totally out of shape. It would just be me panicking from one situation to another.” That description perfectly matches how Brian acts in the movie, hilariously bemoaning having to climb flights of stairs which stretch into the sky, running and screaming just long enough for terror to turn into humour, and self-proclaiming to be “not a gun guy,” despite having to learn on the job very quickly.

Brian stumbles his way through his journey to the heart of Raccoon City, never quite believing what he’s seeing happen in front of him. A combination of the unrelenting pace Cregger injects into the movie and the expressiveness of Abrams’ eyes make for laughs even in its most tense of moments. On the rare occasion that it does slow down for a beat, it's often to hold on Abrams' face as he attempts to take in exactly what shape of body horror he’s been subjected to witnessing next. He acts just like we do when playing the games, watching wide-eyed as whatever monster Capcom has concocted emerges from a freshly beheaded corpse. Normal logic would suggest you’d run straight for the door, as you likely would in real life. But in video games, you feel invulnerable, able to face up to the horrors presented to us. Cregger knows this feeling all too well from his repeat playthroughs of Resident Evil 4, a classic that most accurately hits the sweet spot in finding joyful absurdity in survival horror.

RE4’s opening village section has long been held as one of the most iconic introductions to any game. The delicate balance of creeping dread found in an all-too-quiet rural location is shattered by the tolling of bells and the sudden onrush of a population who have seen far better days. The Resident Evil movie sings from the same hymn sheet, steadily cranking up the tension before the action truly kicks off. This time, instead of a bell signalling a shift in tone, the bark and unearthly bite of a dog is the moment Brian knows things are about to get silly. He may not have the physical skills to pull off a Leon Kennedy-esque roundhouse kick to the head of an undead pensioner — again, this is a very silly video game series — but he does unload a shotgun blast into one that leaves their brain as nothing but red goo on a wall. Brian is having a bad time, but I’d be lying if I said much of the theater wasn’t laughing.

Cregger may only be three feature films deep into his career as a horror director, but already appears to have perfected the art of punctuating moments of terror with humour like this. It should come as no surprise to any who have seen either Barbarian or Weapons — two deeply unsettling movies at times, but also darkly hilarious when he chooses for them to be. The exact same can be said for Resident Evil, which, while never allowing Brian to shoot off quippy one-liners like Mr Kennedy would do, does give the character his fair share of funny moments, more often than not reflecting how we react when playing the games. You’re more likely to be faced with some sort of ungodly foe and find the word “damn” escaping from your mouth, as Brian does in one particularly funny moment, than speak in full sentences. It’s that reaction to the absurd from Abrams that carries the action so well, in many ways echoing the enjoyment that can be found in watching your favourite Twitch streamer play through a Resident Evil game, and the unscripted moments that come from it.

And let’s be honest: Much of the joy in watching other people play games can come from when things go wrong. Schadenfreude is a hell of a drug. Just as it can be funny when people fall off an arena when only one hit away from finishing off a boss, Resident Evil finds the fun in Brian’s failures. It’s much more interested in people being bad at their jobs rather than seasoned professionals — perhaps most keenly observed in how much more of the script is given to Paul Walter Hauser’s hapless company man than Kali Reis’ expert operative. There’s a fantastic running joke when it comes to Brian’s battle against padlocks — a very fun play on the Resident Evil games’ obsession with locked doors and the ludicrous methods of opening them. Here, instead of having to examine centuries-old paintings or slot precious gems into statues, he simply takes them on with a gun, often resulting in hilarious outcomes.

It’s just one example of how Cregger’s movie takes the essence of a Resident Evil game and plays with our expectations, all with the aim of making us laugh. It doesn’t quite completely resist the odd Easter egg item sitting in a room, but it is far more interested in translating the experience of playing the survival horror game than feeding fans little winks and nods. You can really tell that it comes from not only a deep love of Capcom’s games, but of video games in general and the ridiculous nature of them. Speaking of which, Cregger’s fun twist on a Resident Evil stalker enemy brings to mind the wondrous madness of Inside’s ending, which makes Playdead’s puzzle platformer so special, and the snowball-like splendour that powers the silliness behind the Katamari series.

Only video games regularly attempt to blend the mundanity of searching through every drawer in a house for shotgun shells to only moments later have to fire them into a creature unlike anything we’ve seen before, and then ask us to carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary just happened. This occurs dozens of times to Brian on his night through hell, and yet he perseveres, almost laughing off the absurdity of it all with us while evading death at every turn. That “video games!” he proclaims in that one rare moment of success may be spoken by Abrams, but feels directly delivered by Cregger to us. It sums up the movie perfectly, showing the filmmaker’s love for the, frankly silly, source material we all love so much.

Just like video games, Resident Evil is ridiculous, but in all the best ways. It’s an adaptation done in the right spirit, not interested in replicating a story beat-for-beat, but in trying, and succeeding, in reproducing the same joy we feel when playing through them. No, there’s no Mr. X here. But the same laugh you likely let out when you saw his tiny hat for the first time is more than present. And that’s the important part.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .