The lights went down at the Regal LA Live on Tuesday night, and when they came back up roughly 100 minutes later, the reaction in the room was less "let's do the sequel" and more "somebody check on that guy in row six." Zach Cregger's take on Resident Evil has officially screened for its first audience, and the early word is exactly what you'd expect from the filmmaker who turned Barbarian into a sleeper hit: visceral, nasty, and weirdly smart about it.
The Room Reacts
Attendees describe an experience that leans hard into the source material's survival-horror roots while carrying Cregger's unmistakable fingerprints - long stretches of dread punctured by sudden, brutal violence, plus a streak of pitch-black comedy that had people laughing and then immediately feeling bad about it. The premise will ring familiar to anyone who's ever cracked open a PlayStation: a virus escapes a top-secret facility, the resident researchers become ravenous zombies, and the lab animals mutate into hounds from hell. The government's answer is to send in an elite military task force to contain the outbreak. Classic.
But according to those in the theater, Cregger isn't interested in simply replaying the 2002 version. Instead, he reportedly zeroes in on the claustrophobia - corridors that feel like they're closing in, sound design that does most of the heavy lifting, and a cast that plays the material deadly straight until the script asks them not to.
The film runs a tight 100 minutes, which several viewers flagged as a strength rather than a limitation. No bloat. No third-act detour into explaining the mythology. Just a facility, a ticking clock, and an escalating body count. "It knows exactly what it is and refuses to apologize for it," one audience member reportedly said, capturing the general mood of the room.
The Cast and the Chaos
Cregger's ensemble didn't come to play around. The cast reportedly commits fully to the bit, with the kind of physical, exhausting performances you don't get when actors are spending most of their day in front of a green screen. Practical effects got a lot of love in the post-screening chatter - creatures that read as tangible, gore that lands with weight, and set pieces that feel designed rather than assembled in post.
The tone, though, is where things get interesting. Cregger's biggest asset has always been his ability to swing from laugh-out-loud absurdity to genuine terror within a single scene, and by all accounts he brings that same whiplash to a property that's spent two decades bouncing between serious horror and cartoonish action. The result, one attendee suggested, is the rare video game adaptation that respects the game without being enslaved to it.
Not everyone was sold. Some reactions noted that the movie's refusal to over-explain might frustrate viewers who showed up expecting a broader, more accessible blockbuster. And a few wondered whether the film's mean streak - reports of at least one sequence that had people covering their eyes - might divide audiences when it hits wide release.
Why This One Matters
Here's the thing about Resident Evil: the 2002 Paul W. S. Anderson original, starring Milla Jovovich as Alice, is a genuine cultural artifact. It spawned a six-film franchise, a devoted fanbase, and a whole generation of people who think of Alice whenever they hear the word "Umbrella." TMDb still rates that first movie at a respectable 6.671/10, which for a video game adaptation from the early 2000s is basically a medal.
That legacy cuts both ways. A new version has to justify its own existence in a landscape already crowded with zombie content. But Cregger's involvement changes the calculus entirely. He's the guy who made a basement and a measuring tape genuinely terrifying, and if the early reactions are accurate, he's brought that same "how did he make this work?" energy to a franchise that many had written off as a nostalgia play.
The real test comes when general audiences - not just the premiere crowd - get their hands on it. Horror fans are notoriously forgiving of a movie that delivers the goods, and Resident Evil appears to deliver plenty: 100 minutes, no padding, and a director with something to prove. Whether that translates into the kind of word-of-mouth that turns an opening weekend into a phenomenon is the question everyone in that theater was already asking as they filed out.
One thing's clear: nobody left that screening shrugging. In a year full of safe, committee-approved adaptations, Cregger's Resident Evil sounds like it has teeth. Sharp ones.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
