By Nick Nitkowski 

“Resident Evil” is a very popular video game series from Capcom. It is a video game series that is still widely popular to this day. And of course, who could forget the series of “Resident Evil” movies that were spearheaded by Paul W. S. Anderson? While those movies took a lot of creative license including creating an original protagonist, played by Milla Jovovich, who has not featured in any of the games, and despite not a single one of the six “Resident Evil” movies getting a single positive critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, the franchise was very successful. Once that franchise ended, they attempted to reboot it with “Welcome to Raccoon City” which I personally thought was the worst out of all of them.

But now we have a new “Resident Evil” movie reboot film in the year 2026. Naturally, I was worried when I heard that they were trying again with this franchise. However, I was a lot more optimistic when I heard that they director of “Barbarian” and “Weapons” was at the helm of this new version. I was even more interested when the trailer dropped to show that it was more geared towards the horror element. Now that I’ve finally seen it for myself on a big IMAX screen, I can now provide you with my thoughts on the film.

This movie follows a courier whose job is to deliver lifesaving organs to hospitals. But on this night, he’s given an important package that needs to be delivered to Raccoon City immediately, but once he goes to deliver it, a bunch of strange things seem to be occurring with the Residents of the area. One might even call these things… Evil. Thus, we have our story for this new rendition of “Resident Evil”.

I must say that while this movie is absolutely not a faithful adaptation of the “Resident Evil” games, this was by far the best “Resident Evil” movie that we’ve gotten by a wide margin. This movie was crazy and intense in ways that I was not expecting. There were some genuine surprises that caught me off guard. Not so much in terms of jump scares, of which there are but not to an obnoxious degree, but it terms of the monster and execution of the story.

While it’s true that there are no recognizable characters from the source material present in this film, it does take a unique approach to it. Instead of some action hero taking on the zombies in full action hero form with guns blazing, we instead focus on a regular guy, with no gun experience, just trying to do his job as these crazy things happen to him. That is a refreshing take and one that I have not seen in a while where he’s constantly missing a shot or making mistakes along the way.

If there is one gripe that I had with the movie, it’s that the main character, as well as some other characters, takes way too long to make a decision throughout most of the movie. Sometimes, he’s just sitting there watching things happen instead of doing something. Often, the situation would have been resolved if the person had acted fast. There were plenty of moments while watching the movie where I was internally screaming, “Do something!” That’s really my only problem with the film. But of course, if that were to happen, then the hour and a half long film would have been reduced to a short film.

Overall, “Resident Evil (2026)” was a lot of fun to watch. I had a great time watching it. It was full of the crazy gory zombie monster WTF moments that one would expect from a movie like this. While I’m sure that fans of the video game might be disappointed, as a horror film, it greatly excels where all the previous installments failed narratively. If you’re a fan of horror films, this film does not disappoint. It’s definitely worth checking out in IMAX, which provides an open aspect ratio for the last half of the film. So, take residence at the theater this weekend to watch the Evil unfold.

🌟 🌟 🌟  ½ stars