Film tip: Resident Evil sends one unlucky courier into Raccoon City

Zach Cregger takes Resident Evil back to survival horror with an entirely new story rather than another retelling of the games. Austin Abrams plays a medical courier whose routine delivery turns into a frantic fight through Raccoon City as one horrifying night keeps getting worse.

Film details

• Title: Resident Evil
• Premiere date in the Netherlands: 17 September 2026
• Director: Zach Cregger
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Genre: Horror, science fiction, action
• Country: United States
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Dutch
• Age rating: 16+
• Cast: Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Johnno Wilson
• Where to watch in Rotterdam: KINO and Cinerama

What’s the vibe?

Bryan is a medical courier sent on what should be a straightforward delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. Instead, his night collapses into an outbreak, a survival mission and presumably several moments when changing careers suddenly looks extremely attractive.

Director Zach Cregger, who made Barbarian and Weapons, is not adapting the story of a particular Resident Evil game. His film follows a new character while borrowing the structure and feeling of the games: moving deeper into dangerous territory, managing limited options and discovering that turning back is rarely as easy as it sounds.

That makes this less about recognising Leon Kennedy or waiting for a famous cutscene and more about recreating the anxiety of playing Resident Evil. Dark corridors, bad decisions, disappearing resources and creatures that really should have stayed wherever Umbrella Corporation found them.

Trailer

Check out the trailer below.

Why you might like it

• Eyes: Raccoon City at night, practical creature work, bloody effects and the kind of environments that make every doorway look suspicious.
• Heart: Austin Abrams gives the story an ordinary human centre. Bryan is not a super-soldier arriving fully prepared for an apocalypse. He is a courier having an exceptionally unfortunate shift.
• Mind: The film explores what actually makes Resident Evil work: vulnerability, dwindling resources and the tension of moving forward when every instinct says go home.

Critical reception.

The review embargo had not lifted at the time of writing, so there is no meaningful critical score yet. Rotten Tomatoes currently lists 0 critic reviews and 0 verified audience ratings, while Metacritic has no critic reviews or Metascore.

That means any glowing percentage floating around before release deserves suspicion worthy of a locked door in Raccoon City.

Pre-release interest is certainly high. Rotten Tomatoes ranked Resident Evil as its readers’ most anticipated film of September 2026, helped by Cregger’s recent run with Barbarian and Weapons.

Cregger has described the film as a love letter to the games rather than a direct adaptation of their characters or plots. He has said that the pacing was inspired particularly by the older games, where moving into each new area feels dangerous because resources are limited and you do not know what is waiting ahead.

Test screenings also changed the final cut. Cregger revealed that audiences initially found the film too funny, so he removed a number of jokes to keep the horror from losing its tension.

There are no awards or nominations to report yet. With the international release beginning this week, the first proper critical consensus should arrive very soon.

Scene to watch for

Keep an eye out for a sequence teased in the trailer where Bryan runs through a street while infected bodies come crashing down around him.

Cregger wanted the moment to feel physical rather than digital. The production reportedly used cranes and body-sized bags filled with fake blood, timing the falling bodies around Abrams as he ran through the scene.

It sounds completely unnecessary, dangerous and disgusting. In Resident Evil terms, excellent.

Recommended pairing

Keep the pre-film food simple. Anything involving suspicious meat, laboratory-style presentation or mushrooms suddenly feels like tempting fate.

Afterwards, walk somewhere busy and well lit. If somebody starts coughing strangely behind you, continue walking at a perfectly normal pace. Running only attracts attention.

Need-to-knows

This is a new Resident Evil story, not a remake of the 2002 film and not a direct adaptation of Resident Evil 1, 2 or any other individual game.

Bryan was created specifically for the film. Cregger has acknowledged that some fans expected established characters such as Leon S. Kennedy, but he has repeatedly stressed that his goal was to capture the experience and tension of the games rather than reproduce their plots.

The film was co-written by Cregger and Shay Hatten. Its producers include Robert Kulzer, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Carter Swan and Asad Qizilbash, with Constantin Film, PlayStation Productions and Columbia Pictures among the companies involved.

Practical effects play a significant role in the film. Cregger has spoken about preferring physical effects where possible because he wanted the creatures, gore and action to feel as though they genuinely occupied the same space as the actors.

The Dutch cinema release carries a 16+ rating, with warnings including violence, fear and coarse language.