In Frame: Cregger struggles to find balance between comedy, horror in ‘Resident Evil’

There were more than a few moments during Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” where I didn’t know if I should scream or laugh. Most of the time, I was doing one right after the other.

And as with Cregger’s previous work, that mix of comedy and horror worked for me — until it didn’t.

Serving as a reboot for the “Resident Evil” film series, after 2021’s disastrous “Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City” failed to inject any kind of life back into it, be it undead or otherwise, Cregger’s version is a refreshingly competent and effective piece of body horror.

An homage to the beloved Japanese video game series of the same name, “Resident Evil” manages to capture the feeling of playing the game better than any of the adaptations that came before, without getting bogged down by its expansive mythology.

What’s it about?

Unlike the 2021 reboot and the original series starring Mila Jovovich, Cregger’s “Resident Evil” doesn’t feature any characters from the games, though it is heavily inspired by “Resident Evil 4” and “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.”

In this original story written by Cregger and Shay Hatten, Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a medical courier who finds himself in the middle of a zombie outbreak when he takes a job transporting a mysterious, yet urgent medical item to Racoon City, an isolated community in the mountains. While struggling to drive down a dark and snowy road, and distracted talking on the phone to his girlfriend Michelle about her unplanned pregnancy, Bryan hits a woman who walks out in front of his car.

There is, of course, something deeply wrong with her: she’s infected with a lab-grown virus that has spread throughout the whole town, mutating people’s DNA over and over again, until they’re barely human. And if Bryan doesn’t get that medical delivery to the top floor of the Racoon City Hospital in time, the virus just might infect the whole world.

My view

The original “Resident Evil” released in 2002 and ushered in a series of movies that bares little resemblance to its source material, the hugely popular and landmark survival game series that first launched in 1996. That version of the Resident Evil universe features a generic dystopian wasteland, and has more in common with the MCU than the gothic horror and melodrama of the games.

Following the conclusion of that series in 2016 with “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,” “Welcome to Racoon City” attempted to course correct. This resulted in a film that is certainly more faithful to the story and characters in the games, but nevertheless fails to be a decent movie.

Cregger’s “Resident Evil” offers the best of both worlds and succeeds for the most part in being a love letter to the games, and entirely its own thing.

Camera-wise, Cregger often uses first-person perspective when Bryan holds his gun out in front of him, evoking the look and feel of gameplay in “Resident Evil: 7.” Cregger has been vocal about being a fan of the video games, but even if he wasn’t, the movie makes it obvious.

Perhaps the best example of this is the sequence when Bryan is scouring a seemingly abandoned farmhouse for shotgun ammunition. Bryan constantly opening and closing a door draws got a good chuckle out of Peter, who told me it reminded him so much of his own experience playing the games.

While Mila Jovovich’s Alice is basically a superhero, with telekinesis and an endless supply of weaponry, Bryan is woefully unprepared for a zombie outbreak. His ineptitude is hilariously relatable and serves to amp up the tension in every scene. He’s just a random guy having the worst day ever at work. There’s no guarantee he’ll actually deliver his package in time or survive the night.

Story wise, Cregger opts for simplicity. There’s no deep lore to uncover. No complicated exposition to slog through. Bryan, aside from some internal struggle over possibly becoming a father, has a just one external objective. He fights to reach said objective, while meeting mini-objectives throughout. This works wonders for the pacing.

What does not help the pacing is Cregger’s love of and obvious predisposition to find the comedy in everything instead of the horror. It feels like Cregger is constantly fighting this instinct, often giving in, to the movie’s detriment. The guy just can’t stop doing bits. The sequence with Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Paul, and Umbrella scientist, is overly drawn out and borderline irritating because of this.

This is annoying because Cregger is very good at making things scary. I just wish he’d stop undercutting that horror by following it up with a ba-dum-tss every single time.

Abrams, whose relatively small role in “Weapons” made a massive impression, is perfectly suited to Cregger’s madcap style. He really is hilarious, but he’s also capable of sincere vulnerability. I wish his character was a little more nuanced in that respect.

Still, Cregger’s refusal to give video game loyalists exactly what they think they want is admirable and results in a movie that isn’t afraid to just be its own thing, regardless of fans’ expectations.

His willingness to play with genre conventions, often subverting them, is what makes Cregger’s work so exciting, even if it doesn’t work 100% of the time.

I never know quite what to expect going into his films. If anything, that unexpectedness alone makes “Resident Evil” worth watching.

In Frame is a weekly arts and entertainment column focusing on everything from pop culture and new movie releases to the local arts and culture found right here in NEPA. News reporter Margaret Roarty contributes to this column.

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