Branden

Just left the theater. Pros: - excellent opening, it’s creepy, funny, could’ve functioned as a self contained short film by itself - the entire movie is basically the gameplay loop of a survival horror RE game - main character was a good mix of resourceful and inexperienced to make a believable “everyman” protagonist Cons: - I believe that Zach Cregger likes Resident Evil but is far more casual in his fondness for it than he let on in his press tour. I think he played RE4 once about 20 years ago then looked up a couple gameplay videos of RE2 and RE4 remakes to prep for this film. - the zombies aren’t zombies - the monsters aren’t RE monsters - the T virus isn’t the T virus - loses steam about halfway through with repetitive set pieces and becomes too predictable - very abrupt ending with no resolution. It’s believable, but not satisfying as a moviegoer - the movie says nothing about the one single theme that is present in the plot, instead it just shows us imagery related to that theme and tosses it aside for laughs - Umbrella characters are insufferable millennial quirk chunguses for some reason that derail the tone for every scene they’re in, including the climax - too many repeated jokes, sometimes the same joke was made 3 or 4 times - the improv grumbling and solo banter was funny at first but become grating eventually I wish Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil had been trimmed down to about a 30 minute short film including the intro and an extended ending only. 5.5/10