Resident Evil

Sometimes horror lets directors talk about things like trauma and grief be sometimes horror lets a director shoot an 11 year old girl in the face with a shotgun. One of the things I loved about this was how Creggor employs video games tropes like first person shots, weapon inventory management, leveling up, boss fights, etc. but it never feels like you’re watching a video game being played. It’s a delicate balance and Creggor nails it.  I’ve been saying for decades that the main reason video game adaptations don’t work is because the people who make them were too old to have grown up playing video games. Finally the time has come for people who grew up playing games as kids and teenagers in the 2000s to make movies about them in a way that’s intuitive and makes sense and what a difference it makes. I’m not a huge Resident Evil person but when I first learned this wasn’t going to be an adaptation of one of the game stories but rather an original story set in that world my concern was, if you removed any references to Resident Evil, would you know this was a Resident Evil movie? I came away thinking yes. Which just goes to show: never listen to nerds.