Resident Evil: Get in the People Pile!

An everyday-Joe package courier finds himself in increasingly worse conditions as his last delivery of the night finds him in a city with a deadly virus outbreak.

Oh, this is a great one, folks; it really is, and an extra special treat for the fans of the OG Resident Evil arcade games. Trying to combine first-person perspective (in a First-Person Shooter-style game) and keep a Third-Person perspective storyline going for the audience too is hard, and not everyone has managed to interleave all of the above. Yet this new Resident Evil offering, with no Milla Jovovich and her cadre of other named actors in the starring roles, matter of fact, no starring role at all really, is a throwback to evenings spent feeding quarters into arcade games that had shrieking mutant zombies chasing you down all night long. Where you, the player, in this case the movie audience, crow right along with the protagonist in triumph, “Hell yeah, video games!”

Everyone, meet Bryan (Austin Abrams). A normal everyday guy with normal everyday problems, like thinking his longtime girlfriend is now pregnant and not knowing how to respond to that. Like most average young men in similar situations, Bryan’s gun, and really, any violence at all, experience is limited solely to video games. Our Bryan seems like a good if bland guy, but like the rest of us, is ready to put in a bunch of extra effort if offered sufficient financial compensation. And that is how Bryan, and us riding along with him in a car with no chains on seriously hazardous icy roads in the midst of a snowstorm, finds himself delivering a “Priority A” package to, say it with me, oh shit, Raccoon City.

Each act of the movie is like it’s been separated into video game level equivalents, and as the scope of the film gets wider, the monsters get stronger, and the stakes get seriously higher.

Bryan begins off rather badly, hitting a woman who ambled out into the road with his car, but he does try to do the good-guy reaction to that, and take her strange-acting ass to a hospital.

Absolutely no one is surprised when Bryan comes into contact with Officer Wilson (Johnno Wilson) and that whole situation goes sideways too. Getting chased down by a rabid, terrifying mutant dog? Check. Nearly getting killed in the creepy middle-of-nowhere farmhouse by … this thing known collectively as the Amalgamation, or People Pile? Got that too. And we haven’t made it anywhere near Raccoon City yet.

In an act of utter lunacy and huge frustration, Bryan has shouldered the precious package and taken to heading to Raccoon City on foot. As was inevitable, this road eventually leads to a tunnel, with nothing but stalled cars, bloodstains, and violence as far as your phone battery light can see. Bryan has no choice but to go through it, his video-game training in guns by turns

triumphing and utterly failing him. And at this point I’d like to point out that Bryan has gone far beyond what a medicinal courier should be expected to endure, even for a promised massive bonus upon delivery – you have to be alive, and mercifully un-mutated, to spend it.

Being picked up by Maxine (Kali Reis) and Paul (Paul Walter Hauser), and getting a fast lowdown on the current situation certainly speeds up the plot – Umbrella Corp came up with a big fancy serum meant to do blah-blah, lost control of it somehow, and now mutant monsters are running rampant through Raccoon City and its outskirts. Bryan needs to get the precious package to a particular high-rise tower, which is of course now the middle of mutant monster central. But poor Bryan seems to be doomed to continue this insane journey on his own, and so through the city streets on bloodied feet he runs!

The tower scenes offer a bunch of different Umbrella abominations to chase after Bryan in different settings – the elevator shafts, the stairs, the skyway between the buildings – all adding giddily to the video game atmosphere. By this time, the entire audience is gasping, jumping, groaning in failure and crowing in victory, right along with Bryan. The ending is a very clever Resident Evil-style callback that works as both an ending and a cliffhanger in case director Zach Creggar wants to make a sequel. And let’s all hope he does; this new Resident Evil (2026) is monstrously good! Pick a limb to add to the People Pile and see Resident Evil (2026), in theaters now!