Resident Evil (2026)

Our Review

Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian and Weapons, took Resident Evil back to first principles: one ordinary guy, one delivery, one city eating itself. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier who accepts a rush package bound for Raccoon General Hospital and drives straight into the outbreak. There is no squad of supermodels with grenade launchers here. There is a scared kid with a cooler and a town full of teeth.

The result is the best reviewed film in the franchise’s history, and the reputation is earned. Cregger treats the games as sacred text instead of brand filler. The camera crawls when it should crawl, the inventory anxiety is real, and the movie keeps finding horror inside jokes and jokes inside horror. Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Zach Cherry ground the Umbrella side of the story with completely straight faced conviction, and the creature work is the best the series has ever put on screen.

It opened September 18, 2026 and set the franchise record for preview night money, which says the audience was hungry for exactly this: a Resident Evil that finally plays like being inside the game rather than watching someone else play it.

Our score: 8/10. See it in a theater with a crowd, and stay for how hard it commits to the bit.