Video game fans everywhere have reason to rejoice this weekend because Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil (🌟🌟🌟🌟) just set the gold standard for how to adapt a beloved game into a quality film. This film is tightly paced, well structured, and deftly balanced when it comes to the horrific dread of the zombie takeover and the absurd comedy of an everyman trying to get through it all. Speaking of that everyman, Austin Abrams turns in a fantastic performance, replacing the action hero video game avatar with a bumbling, overwhelmed, and terrified protagonist, surviving countless terrifying encounters by the skin of his teeth. I truly can’t say enough good things about Resident Evil - seeing this film opening night in a packed theater morphed into the highlight of my week.  The story here follows Bryan (Abrams), a young medical courier tasked with delivering a highly mysterious and extremely time-sensitive package to Raccoon City on the night of a blizzard. During his trek through the forest on icy roads, he hits a strange woman with his car and tries to spring into action to save her. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems, and Bryan starts to realize the woman he hit is no ordinary pedestrian. As the night goes on, every person Bryan runs into ends up being either a supernatural and violent creature or a member of a secret scientific organization trying to contain an outbreak that’s causing the night’s chaos. Unprepared and in over his head, Bryan takes to the streets, counts his bullets, and braves the unthinkable to deliver a package that winds up being more important than he could have ever imagined.  Resident Evil genuinely feels like a horror survival video game brought to life in all the best ways. The supplies are limited, and every bullet counts. The characters are creepy, dumping exposition and meeting their ends in rapid succession. The environments are terrifying, always leaving you wondering what is creeping around the next corner or down a shadowy hallway. And the monster design is varied, horrific, and unapologetically in your face. Perhaps the film’s greatest trick is how naturally it adopts the structure of a game, with each new location feeling like its own distinct level. As Bryan proceeds throughout the suburban outskirts and eventual hub of Raccoon City, it feels like he’s naturally leveling up and accomplishing objectives the way he would in a video game. The barn, the farm house, the tunnels, the city, the sewer, the garage, the hospital, these all feel like iconic video game levels brought to life.  Another great choice Cregger makes in adapting this material is avoiding the temptation to turn his main character into an action hero and instead makes him a player analogue. The way a player would be clutching their controller, screaming in the dark at every jump scare is exactly how Bryan behaves this entire movie. He is not cool. He is not calm. He was not built for this. And through that comes a lot of the movie’s well placed humor. So much of what is happening on screen is insane and grotesque, and having a protagonist who reacts with a “what the flying fuck is going on” rather than a “same shit as always” attitude really helps sell the movie. Because although the movie adapts the game so well, at the end of the day, this is not a video game. Bryan can’t die and respawn and learn the perfect way to run through a level like a pro; he has to flail and panic and scream for his life because this run through is the only one he’s getting.  So many shots of this film feel like they’re ripped from a video game as well. Lingering over the shoulder of a character trudging through the snow towards an ominously illuminated building. Taking on the first person perspective of a character while shimmying across a destroyed bridge between buildings. This film understands the visual language of both video games & Cinema.