This week’s film is “Resident Evil,” starring Austin Abrams and directed by Zach Cregger. Abrams and Cregger reunite after their success in the surprising hit, “Weapons,” which earned Amy Madigan an Oscar.
"Resident Evil” is the eighth live-action film based upon the video game franchise featuring human resistance to mutant monsters resulting from experiments gone bad by the clandestine bio-organic weapons company, the Umbrella Corporation. Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier in Colorado who takes one last shift to make an urgent delivery to Raccoon City Hospital. During the snowy drive, Bryan ineptly attempts to talk to his girlfriend about their positive pregnancy test, but his call is cut off by a weak signal. Just when things can’t get any worse for Bryan, of course they do, when he hits a random woman on the highway in the middle of a forest.
Cregger takes his time getting to the action, which gives the audience just enough backstory to root for Bryan as the film transitions to its terrifically kinetic chase scenes. Abrams embodies a weird hybrid between Gen Z gamers and Lou Costello in “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” Abrams even has Costello’s high-pitched feminine scream, but instead of not-so-scary bats dangling from wires, “Resident Evil” features very scary, gross mutant monsters spewing tentacles.
So, on my ski trail rating system, “Resident Evil” earns my intermediate BLUE ski trail rating. Austin Abrams single-handedly carries the successful franchise reboot, portraying Bryan as hilariously relatable, delivering multiple slapstick comedic scenes as he fumbles his way through farms, forests, urban sewers, and finally the hospital. The film is at its best when it lets Abrams’ personality flex between humorous incompetence and the reluctant hero as he orchestrates improbable escape after escape. However, the script fails to fully mine this dichotomy and misses opportunities to be outright hilarious, eventually prioritizing its video game immersion over its initial cleverness.
“Resident Evil” is playing in theaters with a run-time of one hour and thirty-seven minutes. The film is rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language and a monstrosity of a cliffhanger.
