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Resident Evil 2026 Is The Movie The Franchise Always Deserved, and I'm Feral About It
Zach Cregger said, “What if survival horror was also funny as hell?”, and somehow it worked
I need to tell you something, and I need you to hear me out. Resident Evil 2026 movie has no Leon Kennedy. Or Jill Valentine. Or Nemesis. Or zombies in the traditional sense. The main character is a guy named Bryan who delivers organs for a living and has never held a gun. And it's among the best times I've had watching a horror movie all year.
I know. I KNOW. When every trailer dropped, and the internet collectively lost its mind because Zach Cregger wasn't adapting any specific game, I understood the frustration.
Resident Evil fans have been through the absolute trenches with these adaptations.
Six Milla Jovovich films that progressively lost the plot. Welcome to Raccoon City, which tried so hard to be faithful that it forgot to be watchable. A Netflix series we all agreed to never speak of again. So when Cregger announced he was making his own original story set in the Resident Evil universe, people were ready to riot before the thing even shot a frame.
I went in cautiously optimistic because Weapons was in my top picks last year and Barbarian was unhinged in the best way. The man has earned my trust with horror. He has not, however, earned my trust with franchise adaptations. And as it turns out, he didn't need to.
TMJ Rating: 🍿🍿🍿🍿/5
So What's the Deal?
Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a medical courier picking up a last-minute gig transporting something urgent to Raccoon City General Hospital. Double pay, hazard rates for driving through a snowstorm, seems like easy money. He takes the job, gets in a fight with his girlfriend on the phone, and proceeds to have the single worst night any human being has ever experienced.
His car crashes. He stumbles into a farmhouse that goes sideways fast. He makes it to the city, and the situation mushrooms from bad to apocalyptic.
The T-virus has torn Raccoon City apart, and Bryan is wandering through the wreckage with a pistol he can barely operate, counting bullets and losing his mind.
The Horror in Resident Evil 2026 Absolutely Delivered
These are not your standard shuffling zombies. Whatever strain of virus Cregger cooked up here pulls way more from Resident Evil 4's Las Plagas territory. Bodies mutating in real time. Tentacles erupting from places that should not have tentacles. An amalgamation of fused limbs that scrambles across the floor like some nightmarish slinky.
Every time Bryan enters a new location, you're scanning the frame for what grotesque thing is about to pop. And the movie keeps escalating. The first infected is unsettling. The second is worse. By the time you're deep into Raccoon City, the monsters are so aggressively horrifying that Austin Abrams screaming at them feels completely proportionate.
Dariusz Wolski's cinematography leans hard into Bryan's perspective, frequently emulating the third-person camera of the games. Check out why Katie Dippold's Widow's Bay is Award-Worthy, Delightful Horror Comedy
It's...Funny? Like, Really Funny?
This movie is hilarious. Not in a campy, winking-at-the-camera way. Bryan is genuinely terrified, and his reactions to the escalating nightmare are so human and so panicked that you can't help but laugh. He mutters to himself constantly. He drops F-bombs after every missed shot. There's a running bit about locked doors and finding keys that any gamer will recognize as an act of love toward the franchise.
Cregger walks a tightrope between tension and comedy that should not work as well as it does. The humor never deflates the scares. Instead, it builds this unpredictable rhythm where you genuinely cannot tell if the next beat will make you flinch or cackle. For the first two acts, the balance is flawless.
Where It Stumbles
The ending. Everyone's going to say it, and everyone's going to be right. The final 15 minutes shift gears in a way that doesn't land.
Bryan starts pulling off moves that feel too competent for the character we've been watching fumble through the whole movie. The humor that worked beautifully as a pressure valve gets a little too broad when the stakes should be at their peak.
And the actual conclusion is abrupt enough to feel like they ran out of budget or pages or both. The screen goes black, and you sit there going, "wait, that's it?"
It doesn't ruin the movie. But it takes what could have been a perfect survival horror experience and leaves you feeling slightly deflated at the finish line.
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Austin Abrams is a Star
This is a one-man show and Abrams carries every second of it. He's alone on screen for massive stretches, narrating his own panic, and he makes Bryan so watchable that 94 minutes flies by.
He was magnetic as the little rat bastard in Weapons, and here he channels that same nervous energy into someone you root for. He's not an action hero. He's more of the guy who'd be on his couch on a Friday night and somehow ended up fighting bio-organic weapons in a sewer.
I saw myself in him, and I'm not sure that's a compliment to either of us. Watch Curry Barker's Obsession. I’m Not Asking.
My Final Verdict
Cregger proved every doubter wrong. He captured the spirit of Resident Evil without copying a single plotline, delivered creature design that'll haunt my sleep for a week, and pulled a leading performance out of Austin Abrams that makes the whole thing sing.
The ending fumbles what the first 75 minutes built with such precision, and some purist fans will never forgive the lack of legacy characters. But as a horror movie? As a survival horror experience on the big screen? This is the best we've ever gotten with this franchise, and it's not even close.
