Zach Cregger is now the best director of horror in the world. I was reluctant to pronounce such. There’s a lot of horror. There’s a lot of world. But with all due respect to James Wan and Ari Aster and Robert Eggers and Jordan Peele and Yeon Sang-ho, I’m taking Cregger. This is three kick-ass quality horror thought-pieces: Resident Evil, Weapons, Barbarian, which is three more than 95% of horror directors will have in their lifetimes.
I was reluctant. I am familiar with the original Resident Evil and Milla Jovovich and its endless number of sequels. They were bad. They were all bad. Similar to Dune (1984), I thought the source material made that franchise impossible as well. I’m always happy to be wrong when it comes to film.
The best film plots are simple in description, and detailed in execution. Resident Evil nails it. Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a medical delivery guy. He’s gotta get a critical package to Raccoon City in a heavy snow ASAP. That’s it. That’s the plot. Ah, but there are complications, aren’t there?
Yup.
Bryan doesn’t have a car capable of driving the mountains during a snowstorm. That’s gonna be a problem. Well, that’s gonna be a minor problem. The larger problem is that the mutating zombie plague has hit, nobody has told Bryan, and he’s going to encounter an increasing amount of evidence of such the closer he gets to delivery. The first occurrence happens when he hits a woman with his car. She stepped out in front of it, so what’s a fella to do? Bryan is very nearly an upstanding guy. He does stop. He does track down the woman. She’s bloody and catatonic, but seems to be alive. So he puts her in his car to take her to the hospital in Raccoon City.
One overturned police car, several bullets, and an insane game of tag later, Bryan is rushing on foot to a midwestern farm in the middle of nowhere. A dog interested in blood comes out of nowhere. It should be noted that Bryan has no natural skill set nor great intelligence. He knows enough to escape a dog in a barn by climbing a ladder to the loft. He uses good judgment to push the barn door closed to lock the dog inside the barn so that when he gets out, he won’t have to worry about being chased. He doesn’t have the foresight to continue using the ladder to get down from the loft and instead throws the tool at the dog where it now lies unusable.
Good one, Bryan.
Things aren’t truly bizarre until the dog sprouts prodding throat tentacles seeking to capture Bryan. WHAAAAAAA????!!!!!
I am going to describe the plot no further. Zach Cregger has an eye for innovative horror and mediocre solution. Austin Abrams is perfect as the delivery guy you know ain’t curing cancer, but is decent enough to want to do the right thing. There are a few absolutely wonderful horror set-ups in this film, and I don’t wish to give them away because they
really are moments so special for horror fans that I don’t want to spoil them. I will, however, point out that somewhere around halfway into the film, Resident Evil invents “the amalgam” a living rat-king zombie, like a giant ball of evil with countless limbs sprouting in every direction to keep it moving. Once this thing identifies Bryan, it hunts him for the rest of the film.
Resident Evil is clever and cringe-worthy. I don’t like horror. I certainly don’t like seeing horror twice, but I’m going to watch this film again at some point. I discount it only for being a used idea. This film is so entertaining, I might even promote it to people who don’t do horror. That’s how good it is. Zach Cregger, you may just make me a horror fan yet.
There once was a delivery boy, Bryan
I’d say that he’s special, but I’d be lyin’
But when apocalypse came
He didn’t run out of shame
Instead, for his job, he kept tryin’
Rated R, 94 Minutes
Director: Zach Cregger
Writer: Zach Cregger, Shay Hatten
Genre: Can’t we just use Amazon?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who can picture being a delivery guy
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Aliens
