“I only use guns in video games,” says Bryan ( Austin Abrams), our frustrated protagonist, trying to piece together a machine gun while his impatient companion urges him to hurry. “It’s confusing in real life!”
It’s the most on-the-nose remark in “Resident Evil,” a movie born of video games that’s trying to just be a movie. But it breaks the tension, it cuts through the slithery gore for a moment — and most importantly, it makes us giggle.
Rarely is it more clear that humor is a key asset to a horror film than in Zach Cregger’s highly entertaining survival-horror, zombie-infestation tale, and luckily Abrams is up to the task. Appealing but not cutesy, scruffy but charming, and basically genuine and kind, his Bryan is the perfect Everyman — a medical courier who somehow ends up as one of the only humans in a world of oozing tentacle monsters.
There will be many seeing this film who are aficionados of the games, and they will find Easter eggs to make them happy. The good news for all the other moviegoers is that we’re none the wiser.
Cregger (“Barbarian,” “Weapons”) has certainly chosen his star wisely. As Bryan, Abrams ends up narrating most of the film — mainly because most of those around him are, well, no longer exactly human.
We first meet Bryan on a wintry night, wrapping up his shift with an organ delivery. But then he’s offered one more job that night — for double pay — and says OK, even though it’s in a snowy mountainous area, and he doesn’t have chains on his car or boots.
Soon he’s on his way to Raccoon City, losing his cell signal, which makes it hard to talk to girlfriend Michelle, who has just found out some life-changing news. In any case, suddenly a body smashes into his car.
This is just one of many well-executed jumpy moments — I know I either screamed at this one, or the next.
Bryan now gets out of his car to follow a set of footsteps in the snow, never the best idea. He finds a woman, bloody and disfigured, all misshapen, but somehow believes she’s fairly normal. We won’t reveal how she figures in the overall plot line, but it’s sort of sweet how Bryan approaches each increasingly terrifying scenario as a minor hurdle in an otherwise manageable night.
He soon finds himself trudging, car-less, from the frigid road to a yard with a terrifying dog, then a barn, then a farmhouse. The environments change every 10 minutes or so, each with new challenges. Just like … a video game?
In one sequence, Bryan finds a shivering young girl, in an old RV, begging for help. He wants to help but realizes that she, too, is infected with the nefarious virus turning townspeople into quivering masses of tentacles. He ends up having to shoot her in the face. “This isn’t real,” he says, narrating. “I like kids!”
A couple in a car picks Bryan up, but their time together does not go smoothly. At least it gets Bryan closer to the place he’s been aiming for all along. And he discovers what he’s been carrying in that organ case.
And then things really hit the fan. Bryan races down a street dodging infected people, who are landing from above with major splats. Cregger has talked about a scene in which Abrams came close to getting killed by a heavy bag filled with fake blood and guts. Just doing the math here: this was probably it. The scene gets applause.
An elevator shaft. A science lab. A warren of sewers. Cregger finds new levels — er, scenarios — to up the ante. Most traumatic: a really messed-up maternity ward.
The onslaught, though, gets a little tiresome, and we become harder to impress. It’s Abrams who mostly keeps things moving with his almost-but-not-completely-overwhelmed, I’ll-get-through-this-right? shtick.
This is a minor moment, but I liked the few clever seconds when we spy our hungry courier downing a snack: milk from the carton, and a handful of Life Cereal nuggets, from the box.
A little sprinkle of Life, amid the murderous mayhem.
“Resident Evil,” a Sony Pictures release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout.” Running time: 90 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
