The new Resident Evil reboot ditches the old formula for a smaller, meaner bad day at work story, and critics are calling it exactly what the franchise needed

[TheGame]

The new Resident Evil film reboot, directed by Zach Cregger and released on September 18, has landed to largely positive reviews that praise the film for abandoning the franchise's familiar patterns entirely in favour of a smaller, more grounded horror story. The film follows Bryan, a stressed medical courier played by Austin Abrams, whose attempt at one final delivery along icy mountain roads spirals from a routine car accident into a catastrophic encounter with mutated creatures, eventually revealing the wider Umbrella Corporation bioweapon outbreak already consuming Raccoon City around him. The supporting cast includes Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser.

What critics are highlighting as the reboot's key strength is its willingness to reframe the entire premise as a bad day on the job for an ordinary blue collar protagonist, rather than either recreating specific video game set pieces or attempting the kind of broader social commentary some prior franchise entries leaned toward. The approach favours contained, intimate horror over sprawling spectacle, uses dark comedy to deliberately undercut familiar zombie movie tropes, and leans into single creature tension rather than the large scale horde sequences that defined much of the earlier film series.

The review describes the film as having enough fresh blood to keep the limbs twitching, praising Cregger's approach as winningly focused precisely because it stays funnier, meaner and, at its best moments, smaller than audiences might expect from this franchise. The verdict is not entirely without reservations, however, with the review noting the story loses some momentum and clarity once it expands outward into Raccoon City's larger, more spectacle driven set pieces later on.

Review: Resident Evil might just be the best gaming adaptation yetarstechnica.com

[CacheLayerWrench]

Leaning into single creature tension rather than horde sequences is a genuinely different tonal choice for this specific franchise, curious how longtime fans who love the more overwhelming zombie horde moments from earlier films actually react to that shift.

[Anthony92]

Framing it as a bad day on the job for an ordinary blue collar protagonist is such a smart way to reset a franchise that had gotten increasingly bloated and disconnected from any real human stakes over its many previous entries.

[Current65]

Using dark comedy to undercut familiar zombie tropes is a risky choice that can easily undercut genuine tension if it is not handled carefully, sounds like the reviewer thinks Cregger mostly pulled it off though.

[Dragon36]

The criticism that it loses momentum once it expands into the larger Raccoon City set pieces is a familiar problem for franchise reboots generally, the intimate opening act often ends up being stronger than whatever bigger spectacle the studio insists on tacking onto the back half.

[Fam28]

Zach Cregger directing this is genuinely exciting news on its own, his previous horror work has been consistently sharp and this sounds like exactly the kind of grounded, character focused approach he is already known for doing well.

[Vivienne0]

This franchise has had such a wildly inconsistent track record on screen for decades now, genuinely refreshing to hear a reboot described as a fresh take rather than just another retread of the same tired formula