If your favorite part of Zach Cregger’s 2025 smash-hit “Weapons” was Austin Abrams as the disoriented yet ultimately charming addict James, “Resident Evil” builds on Abrams’ prowess to create a bigger, bloodier spectacle.

Cregger has become a household name in the horror genre with his exacting style and enthralling conceptual unpredictability. His third solo project marks his first foray into adapting pre-existing intellectual property, choosing the 30-year-old video game behemoth “Resident Evil,” which consists of a total of eleven core-canon games and 10 film adaptations.

For newcomers to the survival horror game, the story involves a fight for humanity against an evil multinational conglomerate — the Umbrella Corporation — and the zombie mutations they have unleashed into the world. In this newest installment, Cregger doesn’t concern himself with over-explaining the 30 years of lore or setting up a cinematic universe. Rather, he sets up a brand new narrative that is as thrilling as it is simple.

Much like a game objective, a medical courier named Bryan (Austin Abrams) must deliver a Schedule A organ carrier case to a hospital in Raccoon City. The task is simple enough, but on this particularly snowy night, a viral outbreak has transformed the entire city into a battleground teeming with grotesque bio-engineered zombies.

From the moment Bryan encounters his first infected entity, a woman whom he accidentally runs over, Cregger puts his foot on the gas and keeps it there the entire 90-minute runtime. Cregger clearly gamifies the film’s structure to honor its roots, with each scene repeating the following beats: drop into a new location, search for ammunition, upgrade ammunition, fight off monsters, get closer to delivering the package.

What prevents this pattern from feeling overly repetitive is how precise Cregger’s direction has become. It feels very evident that David Fincher’s mentoring on “Weapons” has trickled into the polishing of “Resident Evil.” Dariusz Wolski’s camerawork imbues each sequence with dynamism as its precise kinetic energy evokes a sense of dread and discovery, constantly paving a path into the next fleshy hell that Bryan finds himself in.

Cregger also deploys gamic vision within the film, as the camera sporadically jumps to a first-person-shooter or third-person-perspective, making the playfulness of the form pour into the grim cityscape of Raccoon City.

But how does our protagonist fare in this mostly one-man show?

A film such as this, which follows an engrossing yet strict formula, stymies Bryan’s complexity and makes it hard to emotionally invest in him. A subplot involving his girlfriend and a pregnancy attempts to pump blood into the emotive heart of the film, but the script — written by Cregger and Shay Hatten — constricts Bryan’s dialogue to a string of profanities and expository self-narrativizing.

Cregger describes him best in an interview with The Guardian: “He’s more suited to be on the couch playing Resident Evil than surviving Resident Evil, and that’s why he’s the perfect person to put into this scenario.”

It is Abrams’ performance as Bryan that elevates the material with his endearing gaucherie. His best moments stem from the relatable human shock he displays at the amalgamation of Boschian beasts. It’s hard to deny such terror when the creatures that he faces transcend the amateur mechanics of a regular zombie.

In Raccoon City, the zombified transform into an array of beings comparable in diversity to the X-Men. Diving deep into practical effects, iconic SFX artist Shane Mahan (“Jurassic Park,” “Terminator 2”) made a certain sewer creature that was 2,000 pounds and required four people to operate.

“Resident Evil” is unpretentious about what it is. A video game adaptation can only go so far in its depth when the director is having this much fun with the source material. Cregger may have sacrificed his more loaded, mature storytelling skills to frolic in his fanboyish playground, however, this tradeoff never fully compromises his talent or vision, inviting the audience to have just as much fun on this bloody ride.

—Staff writer Kai C. W. Lewis can be reached at [email protected].