After literal decades of less-than-stellar adaptations, attempted reboots, animated movies, and even a failed Netflix series, the Resident Evil video game franchise finally seems poised to get a cinematic adaptation worthy of its cultural status, in the form of Zach Cregger’s new movie, simply titled Resident Evil. One would think that longtime fans of the franchise would be over the moon about this news, right? Is their long-beloved horror series finally getting the kind of critical and cultural reappraisal in the larger filmmaking lexicon that it had so long deserved? Well, sadly, it hasn’t been quite that simple.
Instead, for months now, Cregger and his film have been the victims of aggressive and vehement online backlash, all because he… said he was a fan of the games? It’s an absolutely insane situation and one that showcases just how far removed from reality so many of these terminally online fans have become. Because Zach Cregger is the perfect filmmaker to be tackling a new Resident Evil, and fans should be delighted to have him, rather than actively biting the hand that is feeding them.
If you’re unfamiliar with Cregger’s name, you’re almost certainly not unfamiliar with his work. The filmmaker has skyrocketed to prominence in the last few years, off the back of horror films like the breakout success Barbarian and the Academy Award-winning Weapons. In just a few short years, Cregger has cemented his position as one of the hottest and most exciting horror directors in the medium, so when it was announced that he had a new take on Resident Evil that was inciting a bidding war from various studios, there was plenty of reason to be amped.
As a quick reminder, seeing as so many of the online fans who have had such a negative reaction to the marketing for Cregger’s film thus far seem to have completely forgotten this, Resident Evil is not exactly hurting for movie adaptations. Paul W.S. Anderson shepherded no less than six different movie adaptations of the franchise, all of which were met with mixed to negative responses from fans and critics alike upon release. After that, in 2021, a new film titled Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, was released in theaters and met an even more dire fate, flopping hard. In 2022, there was even a Netflix series, simply titled Resident Evil, which was promptly dropped and cancelled within the span of a few weeks.
I say all of this to say, Resident Evil is not some sanctimonious holy ground that Cregger is treading on; it has been treated like literal garbage for years, and Cregger’s film seems to be the first one to be treating the source material as something legitimately worthy of artistic interrogation and merit. Early on in the marketing process of this movie, Cregger gushed about what a fan he was of the games and how strongly the movie was inspired by the video game Resident Evil 2. This was apparently misinterpreted by some fans as the filmmaker saying that he was going to be strictly adapting that game for the screen, but that isn’t what was said and that’s also not how interpretation or adaptation work.
Cregger has now had to spend the bulk of his time on the press cycle for this film defending himself and the film from these bad faith accusations, which is just fucking insane. The trailers for the film have damn-near-perfectly showcased how Cregger’s own unique tonal sensibilities are going to align with the franchise at large, and it looks like a hooting-and-hollering good time that is saturated with clear adoration for the video game source material. And yet, this manufactured online outrage has persisted and made the whole film a pain for anyone to talk about, Cregger most especially of all.
I am jazzed as fuck to see Cregger’s Resident Evil, because it looks like both a true-blue Resident Evil adaptation amidst a sea of the absolute schlock audiences have been given over the decades and an honest-to-god Zach Cregger film. It is supremely awesome and kind of unbelievable that we are getting this film at all, which is what makes it all the more insane that so many fans seem to be caught up on pedantic nonsense rather than being overjoyed for this film’s release.
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