RESIDENT EVIL (2026) movie poster | ©2026 Sony/Columbia Pictures

Rating: R
Stars: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser
Writers: Zach Cregger & Shay Hatten
Director: Zach Cregger
Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures
Release Date: September 18, 2026

When a character in a horror movie pauses to take a better look, and the audience anxiously (as opposed to mockingly) tells him to keep moving, the filmmakers are clearly onto something.

This is the case with RESIDENT EVIL. The first videogame in the RESIDENT EVIL franchise was released in 1996 and went on to spawn a franchise. The first live-action film based on the game, also titled RESIDENT EVIL, was released in 2002, written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich as its amnesiac but fiercely physically capable protagonist Alice. There have been five more movies in that continuity, all starring Jovovich and three directed by Anderson.

Director Zach Cregger, who co-wrote the new RESIDENT EVIL with Shay Hatten, drops the mass-audience actioner seriousness of the other movies in exchange for a tone that is progressively more horrifying but also darkly and deliberately humorous as it goes.

We still have the touchstones of Raccoon City, the nefarious Umbrella Corporation and the inciting incident of a lab accident that unleashes a mutating biohazard. Otherwise, we’re on new terrain here.

Our lead in the new RESIDENT EVIL is Bryan Hodukavich (Austin Abrams), a young medical delivery driver who thinks he’s made his last drop for the night at a local hospital. Then a doctor offers Bryan double pay if he’ll do an long, late run with a “Priority A” package to the hospital in Raccoon City.

Bryan can use the money, so he says yes and even lies that his vehicle is equipped with snow chains (it isn’t) for the three-hour trip up an icy mountain at night.

RESIDENT EVIL registers mainly as a series of set pieces, alongside a fast-moving character study. The filmmakers provide Bryan with a solid motive to keep going and deftly escalate the dangers and the visuals. (Those who have seen the trailer and are curious about the shot with multiple arms clutching a doorframe will not be disappointed by the payoff.) The special effects work extremely well, and Cregger and Co. manage to change things up a bit with every iteration.

There are also some sequences that are downright disturbing. These are impressively thought-out and edited. We are given sufficient time to take in all the implications, and then we’re whirled away from contemplating them too much as events inevitably take a perilous turn.

As for Bryan, it’s not so much that he goes through traditional character development as much he comes to understand himself better. He’s not a natural hero, so in each situation, he’s unsure what he’ll do, and we’re unsure right along with him.

For one thing, Bryan’s altruism and self-preservation (and just plain dislike of inconvenience) are continually at war, and for another, he’s surely one of the klutziest people ever to anchor a non-parody horror movie.

Unlike a lot of the stoic types we often see in, well, RESIDENT EVIL productions, Bryan gets not only terrified but also grossed out and incredulous. Abrams makes him tremendously plausible and human.

If there’s a complaint to be made about RESIDENT EVIL, is that it doesn’t have much plot. That’s hardly a major flaw in this genre, but it’s often what separates the good from the great.

Otherwise, RESIDENT EVIL has tension and various monsters galore, along with a lot of authentic laughs (albeit many of them nervous). It is, as it intends to be, a fleshy, bloody wild ride.

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