Resident Evil (2026) Movie Review: The Most Polarizing of them All

A New Story

Resident Evil Requiem kicked off 2026 as one of the year’s best games released, but for the most part, it instills the Resident Evil IP to a larger mainstream audience than ever before. With nothing but bangers since Resident Evil 7, the game is healthier than ever.

The same can not be said for Resident Evil in film and streaming. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City  (2021 film), Resident Evil (2022 Netflix series), and Resident Evil: Death Island (2023 CG film) are the most recent projects, and amongst those, probably Death Island is the most endearing to players, as it literally brought together the biggest names of the video game franchise in their actual in-game form.

It’s important to note that distinction, as the Capcom-made CGI films are directly connected to the games. They are connected products that directly use characters from the game and have a place in the actual lore. Meanwhile, Netflix’s effort is met with lukewarm reception and Welcome to Raccoon City just fell flat. Netflix tried the science-y, miracle being approach while Constantin Films’ 2023 Raccoon City effort went a bit in the action-horror direction. Neither landed as impactful as the fanfare of seeing Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, and Rebecca Chambers all shoulder-to-shoulder as they face off in the cheesiest Avengers-style setup from Capcom’s CG movie continuity.

Which leads us to the 2026 Resident Evil movie from Constantin Films once again and stars Austin Abrams as Bryan and directed by Zach Cregger.

One Night in Raccoon City

Resident Evil follows Bryan, a medical courier played by Austin Abrams, whose working night turns into a struggle to stay alive as he gets caught in the Raccoon City outbreak. What begins as a delivery job sends him into increasingly dangerous encounters with the infected, forcing someone with no preparation for any of this to figure things out as he goes.

The story unfolds over one night, keeping the immediate problem fairly simple: Bryan needs to survive whatever is in front of him long enough to find a way out. His access to weapons and supplies is limited, and getting through one encounter offers little assurance that the next place will be any safer. That progression gives the film a familiar survival-horror setup, with an ordinary task becoming more complicated and more dangerous with every attempt to move forward.

Raccoon City gives that journey a setting that players already associate with disaster. We come in knowing what an outbreak here means, while Bryan has to deal with its consequences as they happen. That difference is useful for building tension. The audience has a reason to distrust the prospect of safety long before the person on screen understands how bad his situation has become.

Cregger builds his original story around that civilian perspective. Bryan’s immediate concerns keep the scale personal, even with a larger catastrophe unfolding around him. The premise gives us a straightforward way into this version of Resident Evil, and leaves the movie with the task of making this particular person’s night worth following.

What Characters?

Besides Bryan, the movie is very slim in on-screen characters.

That puts a lot of pressure on Bryan to carry the movie, and this is where I felt the limitations of making him such a passive participant in his own story. There is something believable about a person who is completely unequipped for the situation, especially when we are used to seeing Resident Evil protagonists eventually handle themselves against whatever is chasing them. Bryan gives us the panic and desperation of an ordinary person, but that can only take a character so far before we need another reason to stay invested.

His tendency to stumble his way out of trouble gives us something to work with. These are flaws that could make his survival interesting, particularly if surviving meant having to confront those habits. Someone who takes more than he needs could eventually have to share. Someone who keeps looking for an escape could find a reason to stay and help. There is room for a character like Bryan in Resident Evil, but I wanted the experience to bring out something in him that would make the next encounter feel different from the last.

The small cast also limits the relationships that could have given those changes some weight. When there are so few people to bounce off, Bryan’s reactions have to carry much of the emotional work. Fear is easy enough to understand, but trust and attachment need time with another person. Even a brief partnership could have given us a better sense of who Bryan becomes when someone else is depending on him.

I don’t need every character in a Resident Evil movie to be recognizable from a character selection screen. I do need a reason to care about the people occupying it. The frustration here is that Bryan has enough flaws to start a story, but his repeated brushes with death don’t give me enough to change my initial impression of him. By the end, I understood why he wanted to survive. I still wanted a stronger reason to root for him.

Cinematic Presentation

I applaud Zach Cregger’s style in how he uses the camera especially in situations where Bryan has to figure something out and decides to shoot at things. Speaking of shooting, the first-person view slow creep is a nice touch but this era of the game was stationary cameras except Gun Survivor.

That perspective is still effective for the kind of vulnerability the movie is going for. Restricting what we can see puts us closer to Bryan’s predicament, where moving forward means committing before we have all the information. There is a familiar Resident Evil tension in having to look into a space that we would much rather leave alone. The camera gives that hesitation room to work.

I also liked the connection between figuring something out and taking action. Those moments translate a recognizable part of playing the games into something that works on screen: looking at the situation, deciding what might work, and then dealing with the consequences. Bryan’s uncertainty helps here. There is tension in watching someone make a decision when we have so little confidence that he knows what he is doing.

The audio side is important to that restricted perspective. A sound outside the frame can suggest a threat before the camera reveals anything, while a gunshot can make a desperate decision feel abrupt and final. With so few characters around, there is also more room for the environment to hold our attention. That is an especially useful approach for a story built around isolation and limited resources, where listening can feel as necessary as looking.

The creatures were another part of the presentation I liked, and their presence gives Bryan’s desperation something tangible to work against. My frustration is with how often the movie returns to the same pattern of putting him in danger and letting him scrape through. Individual encounters can be effective while the overall progression starts to feel repetitive. The camera work helps sell the immediate situation, but I wanted those situations to build toward a stronger payoff.

The Raccoon City Problem

The online debate between fans who start off each of their statements with “as a true fan of the Resident Evil series” is insufferable.

But Resident Evil isn’t new to this, and they already solved this in-game. While the Resident Evil movie suffers from an identity crisis, Resident Evil Requiem solved this by serving both sides. Because at the end of the day, we want the version of Resident Evil that we love, whether its the horror or the action, regardless if its with Leon or some FBI agent named Grace. The 2026 Resident Evil movie didn’t have the foresight that that duality can provide a good cushion while still grounding itself into an original story.

There is no official source corroborating the claim that Constantin Films is not allowed to create, use, or write stories 1:1 to the games so we’ll throw that little rumor out the window. Bryan felt like Grace Ashcroft, bumbling and hapless, but believably real. Where they diverge is that Grace gets pissed off, while Bryan just ends up in a comic finish that does nothing to leave a satisfying finish but instead give us more questions. Questions which is cliffhangered because we’ve just been set-up for a sequel. Resident Evil Requiem solved the horror problem with Grace and also solved the action problem with Leon. We don’t need Chris, Leon, or Jill for this movie but a reliable action character that bails out Bryan would’ve made for a more emotional resolution as they could’ve made a bond thru their battles. Rather, Cregger leaned on Silent Hill/Last of Us-esque resource deprivation to give the audience that feel of being a character in Raccoon City during an outbreak.

For the most part, it hit the right mark. Barring the comic bits, it was functionally horror and indeed felt like the same situations but this formula was repetitive throughout the film and there was really no that Bryan lived thru that wasn’t sheer dumb luck and that’s an important point. Nowhere in this movie made Bryan someone to get behind of. He is literally a forced side quest of someone that’s hard to care for. From the start of the film, we’re shown the Bryan will lie and weasel his way out of a situation, he’s also shown to take more than what he needs. For most people, he is simply unlikable. But Bryan is also the everyman. Just an average citizen living day to day, and there is nothing interesting about the average Joe falling victim to post-apocalyptic nightmare.

These are unimaginable events and people hope for unimaginable outcomes and this Resident Evil’s choice to deliver its finale in perhaps the most infuriating way possible with no payoff is by far the most distant to any Resident Evil that we’ve seen so far, in video games or in film.

Zach Cregger is admittedly a fan but just like any fan, he has his vision of the game he likes. I’ve always agreed to the notion that movie adaptations should strive to create their own story but veer too far and you might miss the mark. Similar to Marvel’s Wolverine on PS5 that just released, I felt their take on mutant without the X-Men felt completely off and its the same case in this Resident Evil. Its a good horror movie with a bad ending, but it’s a worse Resident Evil story (note: I said story).

You can convince yourself that it captures the struggle of the regular person in Raccoon City during the virus outbreak and that Bryan is all of us but that’s what Resident Evil BIOHAZARD, Resident Evil Village, and Resident Evil Requiem are supposed to feel like. Capcom had the template nailed down with Village and Requiem but we receive another Raccoon City outbreak story. Wasn’t Outbreak an everyman story as well? These have all been told over and over again. It’s frustrating because I seriously liked this movie’s creatures and premise but I hated how it was setup in the beginning and I hated how it ended. I came in without expectations, and I came out frustrated in trying to be as open-minded and receptive whilst also being critical of a film that I feel is carrying too much weight in a year where its main IP is enjoying its best year.

Closing Thoughts

I liked enough of Resident Evil to find its shortcomings frustrating. The creatures and camera work give Bryan’s journey moments of tension, and the limited resources help sell how unprepared he is for the outbreak. Cregger has a clear sense of how to put someone in danger and make the audience feel uncomfortable watching them try to get out of it.

Where the movie lost me was in giving that struggle a satisfying progression. Bryan keeps surviving, but my investment in him barely changes. His flaws could have given the story somewhere to go, especially if the night forced him to take responsibility for someone besides himself. By the time the ending arrives, I wanted the experience to have amounted to more for the character. The comic finish and apparent sequel setup left that frustration unresolved.

I came into this open to an original Resident Evil story. There is plenty of room in Raccoon City for people we have never met, and following a civilian through an outbreak is a premise I can get behind. What I wanted was for this particular person’s experience to give me a reason to remember him.

As a horror movie, Resident Evil has sequences and creatures I enjoyed. As a complete story, it left me dissatisfied. I would have been much more interested in where Bryan goes next if this film had given his first night a more rewarding conclusion.