Resident Evil is a 2026 horror film written and directed by Zach Cregger, co-written with Shay Hatten, and released theatrically on 18 September. It runs 90 minutes and stars Austin Abrams as Bryan Hodukavich, a medical courier delivering a package to a remote hospital who finds himself inside an outbreak, with Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser in support. Cregger himself provides the voice on the hospital intercom.

Some context before anything else. Earlier this year I covered Resident Evil: The Final Chapter on this site and gave it a 2. Same franchise, same name above the title. Tonight I am handing one of these a 9. That is a seven-point swing inside a single series, and it is worth explaining how that happened.

This is an incredible effort at showing what can be done when the source content is respected and adapted with care.

Is this film perfect? No. There are a few small criticisms I can level at it. The ending had a couple of rough moments. And mostly, my complaint is simply that I did not get a longer film.

I want to be clear that I am not reaching for those, because they are precisely the two criticisms the professional reviewers arrived at. Roger Ebert’s site wrote that Resident Evil may be one of the rare recent cases where a blockbuster based on a famous property actually feels like it could have been a bit longer, noting that Cregger could have sustained the tension for one more set piece. The same review then observed that the final scenes feel like they get away from Cregger somewhat, and are clunkier than the rest of the film. That is my review, written by somebody else, several weeks before I sat down.

The direction, the cinematography, the sound design and the visual effects were all amazing. And the thing I keep thinking about is the use of negative space. Those moments where you are looking at an empty frame and then something begins happening in the far distance. That is an incredibly difficult effect to pull off without it feeling like a cheat, and it works here every single time.

The farm scene specifically, with the dog emerging from the back of the open field and running at him, got my heart rate up properly. It is one of the best uses of distance in a horror film I have seen in years.

The humour was also really well handled. Austin Abrams did amazing work. The RV scene was one of my favourites in the whole film.

And apparently I only received a portion of it, because one reviewer reported that Cregger cut most of the comedy from his final edit. What remains is embedded in how the story unfolds and in Abrams’ reaction shots. So what I was laughing at is the material that survived the cull, which makes the balance all the more impressive.