Resident Evil

October 2 – 8

Fri Oct 2 – 7 pm
Sat Oct 3 – 7 pm
Sun Oct 4 – 1:30 & 7 pm
Mon Oct 5 – 7 pm
Tues Oct 6 – 7 pm
Wed Oct 7 – 3:30 pm ONLY
Thurs Oct 8 – 7 pm

Action / Horror
Rated 18A — 1 hr 30 min

Resident Evil is a brilliantly funny film for people who are terrible at video games. The director of ‘Weapons’ has made a movie that’s incredibly faithful to the blockbuster video games that inspired it – yet which features enough bloody elegance to satisfy non-gamers. The recent spate of video game adaptations have so far failed to capture a crucial aspect of the medium: the experience is determined entirely by the player. And sometimes the player is really, really crap at the game.

It’s a tonal quirk that makes Zach Cregger’s reboot of Capcom’s blockbuster game series Resident Evil a funny, delirious symphony of cartwheeling, flesh-and-bones zorbing balls and exploding blood bubbles for the non-gamers, and a pointed meta-comedy for the gamers about how everyone thinks they’re a zombie executioner extraordinaire until they miss five consecutive headshots and then somehow die to a rat.

Resident Evil, then, is about as faithful as can be to the experience of sitting down to actually play one of these games. Unless you’re a god with a controller, it’s a strange, delightful concoction of sublime ridiculousness, dangerously elevated cortisol levels, and the ever-escalating fear you’re about to come face with the most disgusting sentient meat patty your mind could ever conjure. For Cregger, I imagine, that counts as mission completed.

What’s clear about Resident Evil from the first frame is that it’s got some serious pep in its step. At 95 minutes, Resident Evil is here for a good time, not a long time, and it hits the ground running as Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier, accepts a last-minute assignment to bring a high-priority delivery through the mountains to Raccoon City General Hospital. We encounter our first zombie less than 10 minutes past that point, and from there, Cregger doesn’t ever let too long go by without putting Bryan through some funhouse maze of grotesquery he’s ill-equipped to contend with, and to frequently hilarious effect.

With an obvious tendency towards celebrating the feel of the games and not the specifics of the plot, Resident Evil consistently succeeds in amplifying classic gameplay moments from the franchise into horror movie beats in a way that goes far beyond simple fan service and “I understood that reference” references. Searching for ammo, spotting an oncoming enemy, reloading on a time crunch as they close distance, getting a perfectly timed shot off, being lured into the dark by something you may not be equipped to deal with… Cregger’s Resident Evil is littered with touches like these that are actually used to ratchet up moment-to-moment dread and not just to pay lip service to gamers.

With a laser focus on putting its hero through the worst night of his life, Resident Evil is a simple and exciting survival horror story that benefits greatly from Zach Cregger’s sensibilities. Austin Abrams is exceedingly charming as the woefully outmatched medical courier Bryan as he’s dragged through a hellish coterie of well-realized mutants and monsters by Cregger, whose good eye for creature effects, mounting dread, and signature humor all leave Resident Evil feeling very well represented.