horror flicks<\/a>) and plenty of easter eggs for die-hard fans.<\/p>\nSign up for the Arts & Culture newsletter to get the latest stories delivered to your inbox<\/p>\n
THANK YOU!<\/p>\n
You’re all set.<\/p>\n
CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The film introduces a new character to the \u201cResident Evil\u201d universe, a medical courier named Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, who previously acted in Cregger\u2019s breakout horror, \u201cWeapons.\u201d He\u2019s basically the guy responsible for getting donated organs from Hospital A to Hospital B before the transplant is no longer viable, an important but unglamorous job. <\/p>\n
When the movie starts, Bryan\u2019s wrapping up his shift and gets a last minute request to make a run outside his usual zone to Raccoon City, a seminal location in the franchise. It\u2019s up in the mountains, it\u2019s late, it\u2019s starting to snow\u2026 but the trip pays double his usual rate, and Bryan accepts.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the setup. The movie takes a few minutes to introduce you to Bryan before launching into his journey to Raccoon City without much throat clearing, which is ideal because the full feature is only supposed to be around 94 minutes long. What we saw in the movie\u2019s first third was a hellish journey on an icy road where things go from bad to weird to worse for a guy who slowly has to learn what the audience knows from the beginning: that he\u2019s a character in a \u201cResident Evil\u201d movie.<\/p>\n
Whereas most horror films, Cregger\u2019s previous work included, are 80% buildup, 20% legitimate scares, the director seemed committed to inverting that ratio this time around. Once the tension starts ratcheting up, it never really goes away, and effective jumpscares and sharp camerawork had our entire audience leaning in, gasping and generally celebrating the madness on screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just kind of stumbling from one heavily adrenalized situation to the next,\u201d Cregger said on Tuesday. \u201c\u2019Barbarian\u2019 and \u2018Weapons\u2019 had those moments, but it was like, \u2018Can I build an interesting movie that is mostly those moments?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_8752.jpeg\")
After the early screening on Tuesday night, writer\/director Zach Creggar answered questions via livestream. <\/p>\n
Photo by Austin Zook for Dallas Observer<\/p>\n
Some fans of the franchise may be turned off by the fact that Cregger\u2019s not bringing in longtime characters from the \u201cResident Evil\u201d games to tell his story, or choosing not to adapt a specific game\u2019s storyline. The result, however, still feels like it\u2019s happening in parallel to a \u201cResident Evil\u201d game.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s what makes this adaptation so thrilling. It honors the games\u2019 atmosphere, but it brings its own toys to the sandbox. In Cregger\u2019s film, the t-Virus (which causes the horrific mutations in the games) has just broken out, and he drops an everyman into the middle of the world and makes him learn the rules, set piece by bloody set piece. It\u2019s a faithful adaptation of the world and the vibe, without just delivering a watered down version of something you can play through at home on your PlayStation 5. It\u2019s simultaneously fresh and familiar \u2014 a delicate balancing act.<\/p>\n
While he wanted to make something true to the spirit of the entire franchise, during the AMA Cregger shared that his two major inspirations on the film were \u201cResident Evil 4\u201d and \u201cResident Evil 7.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeven is where Ethan comes into it\u2026 I like that you\u2019re just kind of a normal dude going through this horrible situation, but four has the rhythm that I really like, where you\u2019re moving from set piece to set piece, location to location,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One of the most surprising revelations from the AMA was that Cregger himself has never seen any of the other \u201cResident Evil\u201d films. He\u2019s a devoted fan of the games, but has never felt compelled to watch the movies because they didn\u2019t seem to capture what he loves about the franchise. He acknowledges the irony, now that he\u2019s created his own adaptation that fans worry will go too far afield from its origins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been kind of, like, bristling a little bit,\u201d Cregger said. \u201cThat there\u2019s been so many people who love the games who have been\u2026 picking nits with this movie, and then I feel defensive\u2026 and I feel like, \u2018But they just don\u2019t understand!\u2019 And then I have to realize that is exactly what I did with the other movies that came before, where I had that attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having seen a decent chunk of what he\u2019s put together now, we can say with confidence that this is the \u201cResident Evil\u201d film fans have been waiting for \u2014 effectively rendered and thoughtfully constructed. When the roughly 30-minute AMA came to an end, we only had one complaint: that we have to wait two weeks to see the rest of the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas was one of only three citites in the U.S. to host a special early screening event of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,26861,5440],"class_list":["post-424437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-film-reviews","tag-first-look"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_8729.jpeg\")