When they announced that there would be a Resident Evil reboot I think everyone rolled their eyes as if to say 'another one?'. Some were slightly intrigued when it was announced that Zach Cregger would be directing it. I was a big fan of Weapons and really enjoyed Barbarian. The bar was quite low to say that this was the best film in the Resident Evil series considering most of them are fairly terrible and not in a fun kind of way. The set up is that Austin Abrams plays Bryan who is a courier and is delivering organs to a hospital when he is offered a job that pays well to take a package to Racoon City Hospital. On the way he hits someone and things go from bad to worse. Everyone that Brian comes across has been infected and it's the fault of the Umbrella Corporation and the package is part of the cure.
There are many things that I liked about this film. I thought that the humour was perfect. Bryan isn't an action guy and is actually a klutz who seems to be suffering from the worst luck. The whole house portion of the film was really well done and even though it might have bordered on cliche it never stayed long enough in the house for that to be an issue and the story then moved to Racoon City. The film is only 95 minutes so this is as stripped down as its possible to get and Cregger has managed to keep all the interesting things and apparently in the original cut there were more jokes and they were taken out cause the test audience was laughing. Well he took them out but left enough humour to make it entertaining.
The atmosphere that Cregger has created is brilliant. The darkness mixed in with the snow is used to great effect. Even though its at night I could still see what was happening. One of the the things that I liked in Weapons was how things just seemed to go crazy completely out of nowhere and there are a couple of scenes where Bryan is running and they are all great especially when people are throwing themselves off the top of buildings and its just a great visual. Also Cregger knows how to make jump scares scary. There are directors who rely too much to get a reaction out of people but Cregger knows how and more importantly when to use them.
I thought that Austin Abrams was really good. He didn't know it all and wasn't even good at firing weapons and his reaction to crazy things happening was absolutely spot on. Paul Walter Hauser is probably the most famous name in this film and he is probably in it for about 10 minutes. He comes in and delivers a bunch of exposition and is quite funny but just cause he is the famous name doesn't mean he was long for this film.
If I did have an issue with the film then it's with the final ten minutes or so. Once it got into the lab and Bryan transforms, then I found myself not as interested in it and felt it went a bit too silly. The last shot is of Bryan fully transformed almost certainly about to die was probably the right way to end it but I just thought the silliness went a bit too far.
Overall I really enjoyed this film and was surprised with how much I enjoyed it. I was worried that it was going to go the way that Return to Silent Hill did earlier this year but thankfully it is far more creative, far more atmospheric and better in absolutely every way. I must admit I don't know too much about Resident Evil as I have only played the very first game and watched the Paul W.S. Anderson films so I can't say that I am mega invested in the game series but as a horror film it more than delivers.
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