An agile, tense and fun horror rollercoaster

Resident Evil, the video game, revived the living dead back in the 90s, but if the franchise endures it is because it is a mutant and a vampire: a mutant because it never stops changing and a vampire because it sucks from the best horror whatever suits it best. Aside from the zombies of George A. Romero, it has reinterpreted The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, David Cronenberg or European gothic in a remix vertebrated by a clear idea: to make the player go through all sorts of things in a video game horror attraction.

This spirit is what Zach Cregger has managed to capture. Let the filmmaker's fans rest easy: his Resident Evil is a horror experience on par with his short but solid filmography. And fans of the video game have nothing to fear if they accept a version that is free but faithful to the spirit. Like the recent Exit 8, Resident Evil focuses on recreating the sensations of a session of the original game, from the structure and pacing to the use of scarce ammunition to generate tension. The camera work, the progression of settings and the chases by invincible beasts come directly from the Capcom games, but do not require knowing them to enjoy it. Cregger joins all this with a plot similar to that of another film with a video game vibe, the war film 1917, where a defenseless messenger crosses hell in real time. And the result is an agile, tense and fun horror roller coaster.

The filmmaker's origins in humor serve him here to shore up this roller coaster while recovering another source that the games had already vampirized: the grotesque horror comedy of Sam Raimi. As in the best moments of the Evil Dead saga (or, for that matter, Weapons), Resident Evil makes us laugh while we cringe and cover our faces with our hands. A new and successful mutation that clearly demonstrates that only with creative ease can one avoid being a cultural zombie.