Why Does Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Have Me Feeling Optimistic?

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Resident Evil 2026 movie still

If you're like me and you're actually looking forward to Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie, and people are wondering why, the answer is pretty simple - Cregger (Weapons) seems to understand that making a good Resident Evil movie has to come before everything else.

The previous Resident Evil film series spent years borrowing pieces of Capcom's games and turning them into increasingly elaborate action movies - they had zombies, Umbrella, monsters and familiar imagery, but the further the series went, the further it moved away from the survival-horror experience that made the games so distinctive, but Cregger seems to be coming at it from the other direction.

You might have read him talking about wanting to capture what he actually loved about playing Resident Evil - the slow movement, limited ammunition, resource management, constantly changing environments and that feeling of being thrown into a nightmare and having to find your way through it, and he has also said that he didn't want to simply retell one of the existing games because, frankly, the games already do those stories pretty well.

And that, to me, is one of the most encouraging things about this movie, because he seems to be trying to understand what actually makes Resident Evil work.

Bryan Is A Much More Interesting Protagonist

The new film follows a character named Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, a medical courier who gets caught up in a viral outbreak - he's not Leon Kennedy, he's not Chris Redfield, and he's not Jill Valentine, which is actually one of the things I like, because rather than forcing one of the established heroes into a completely new story, Cregger can actually introduce somebody who has no reason to know how this world works.

We all know, well, most of us will know, that vulnerability is one of the most important parts of survival horror, as once your protagonist has spent several movies becoming an almost unstoppable action hero, there isn't much fear left - a character who has already fought zombies, giant monsters and Umbrella's increasingly ridiculous experiments isn't going to react to the next one in quite the same way as somebody encountering it for the first time.

Bryan is a medical courier who just so happens to find himself in the middle of an outbreak, which means we can discover what's happening alongside him rather than watching another professional monster hunter arrive and immediately start shooting everything that moves, which gives Cregger an opportunity to make the audience feel uncertain again.

You don't know what Bryan knows. You don't know what's around the next corner. And if he doesn't have the skills to deal with everything coming after him, running away might genuinely be the best option, which sounds pretty basic, but it's also something the movies have managed to lose surprisingly easily over the years.

One of the biggest problems too with video-game adaptations is that people often seem to think being faithful means throwing recognizable things onto the screen - you put the characters in, recreate a few locations, bring back the monsters everyone remembers and give the fans enough references to spot - job done.

Except Resident Evil isn't really about any one of those things - it's about moving through somewhere that feels hostile, knowing you probably don't have enough ammunition, opening a door without knowing what's waiting behind it and slowly figuring out how you're supposed to get out.

That sense of uncertainty is much harder to recreate on screen than a zombie, but it is also where Cregger's approach could make the biggest difference.

This Doesn't Need To Be A Direct Adaptation

Cregger has also chosen not to retell one of the existing games, and I think that's probably the right decision, because there is little point in making a slightly altered version of a story players already know when the original games are still available, so the film can just borrow the things that make the franchise work while creating its own characters, locations and situations, which means Bryan doesn't need to become Leon Kennedy halfway through the movie.

And Cregger doesn't need to spend the first ten minutes ticking off references simply to prove that he knows the source material - he can take the basic language of Resident Evil and use it for something new, which I think is a much more interesting challenge.

I also think Cregger has picked an interesting time to try this.

The games themselves have changed considerably since the original Resident Evil - Resident Evil 7 moved the main series into first-person horror, Village combined that approach with larger-scale action, and Resident Evil Requiem has continued demonstrating how flexible the series can be, so basically there is no single version of Resident Evil anymore.

The franchise has spent decades moving between survival horror, action, first-person perspectives, psychological horror and increasingly elaborate monsters, while still retaining certain things that make it recognizable, which should give Cregger plenty of room to find his own version.

The Real Test Is Whether It Feels Like Resident Evil

I really want to see whether Cregger can recreate that strange feeling the games give you when you're somewhere you shouldn't be, you've used too much ammunition, you've got no idea what's waiting ahead and turning around might somehow be worse than carrying on.

The previous movies understood the franchise as a collection of characters, monsters and mythology, but Cregger appears to be approaching it as an experience, and if he gets that right, Bryan doesn't need to be Leon Kennedy, and the movie doesn't need to recreate an entire game.

It just needs to make us nervous about opening the next door, and after years of Resident Evil movies becoming increasingly interested in action, spectacle and franchise mythology, that would actually be a pretty radical change.

And with the film arriving in cinemas on September 18, 2026, we're now close enough to finding out whether Cregger's gamble actually works.


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