Resident Evil

Despite a perfect opportunity to rest on his laurels - thanks to the rich, circuitous history of Capcom's video game property - Zach Cregger's take on Resident Evil instead represents a change in storytelling technique that better serves the filmmaker's abundant horror comedy skill-set. Weapons, with its varying perspectives on a town bereft of children, was piecemeal by design but Barbarian, the writer-director's breakthrough hit, undercut several finely composed horror situations by journeying elsewhere at crucial moments. In fairness, Cregger used these breaks to consolidate unease and layer in alternative threats but there was a nagging sense that, perhaps, these distractions were being employed to avoid having to commit to a specific resolution. Not so with Resident Evil, which stays locked-in with Austin Abrams' medical courier Bryan as he struggles, impressively, to transport a much-needed organ across a landscape crawling with incomprehensible, cartwheeling threat. 

Rather than suit-up with the specially trained police officers that the video game series usually revolves around, Cregger's hero is a pleasant tweaker braving iced, pitch black roads and incoming calls from a pissed-off girlfriend to deliver his precious cargo. As a pitch, this Resident Evil is very much After Hours meets The Thing (and, latterly, An American Werewolf in London) but it's worth noting that Bryan doesn't invite his misfortune through antisocial behaviour or duplicity. If anything - and certainly for a movie character - he's honest and respectful, particularly when dealing with situations that demand he take responsibility. A would-be hit-and-run becomes an extended comedy of errors with Bryan attempting to transport a defrosting zombie; while a run-in with a conscious, vulnerable infected sees Bryan willing to maintain the social contract, despite an obvious (even blaring) red flag. This latter detail - that bodies threaded with the film's curling, castellan contagion remain painfully aware of their degrading faculties - allows a certain poignancy to creep into proceedings while still playing with an audience's willingness to side with a narrative subject over the squealing meat puppets thrown in their way.