#ResidentEvilReboot is the hashtag for writer-director Zach Cregger’s Sony Pictures reboot of Capcom’s Resident Evil video-game franchise — Austin Abrams as a medical courier making a delivery to Raccoon City General as an outbreak begins to consume the hospital — which premiered September 17, 2026 at Fantastic Fest with a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and a Metacritic 80, the highest-ever score for any tracked video-game movie adaptation.
Quick Facts
- Fantastic Fest premiere: September 17, 2026 (21st edition)
- Wide theatrical release: September 18, 2026 (Sony Pictures)
- Writer / director: Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons)
- Cast: Austin Abrams (Bryan), Zach Cherry, Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis
- Budget: $80 million
- Rotten Tomatoes (opening): 96% from 71 critics
- Metacritic: 80 — highest of any tracked video-game movie
- Source material: Capcom’s Resident Evil game franchise (Raccoon City / T-virus lore)
- Predecessor reboots: Paul W. S. Anderson / Milla Jovovich films (2002–2016); Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
The Film
The story opens on Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier, walking into a busy hospital on a phone call with his girlfriend. He is delivering to Raccoon City General on the night the outbreak begins. From there the film locks him inside the collapsing hospital and turns his shift into an all-night survival gauntlet. Cregger reuses the Resident Evil franchise iconography — Umbrella, Raccoon City, T-virus creature designs — but stages the movie as a hospital-set horror-comedy rather than a franchise-management exercise.
Critical Reception
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil opened at the 21st Fantastic Fest with an unusually strong critical reaction for a video-game adaptation: 96% on Rotten Tomatoes across 71 opening-weekend critics and a Metacritic 80, both firsts for the category by a wide margin. Variety’s Jordan Moreau called it “one of the best video game adaptations ever made”; Collider’s Perri Nemiroff called it “one of the best horror comedies I’ve ever seen.” Film journalist Kellvin Chavez wrote that the film “has its foot on the gas from the opening scene,” praising Cregger’s suspense and creature designs. CBR ran a 9/10 review calling it “a full-throttle nightmare.” Legacy Resident Evil movie reviews had never crossed 40% on RT, so the scores landed as a genre-wide reset.
Cultural Impact
The film cleared a bar the Resident Evil movie franchise has been failing to clear since 2002 — a critical consensus in the “actually good” range — and, more broadly, put Zach Cregger squarely inside the current generation of horror auteurs after Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025). Its Metacritic score reframed the conversation about video-game adaptations: what had been treated as an inherently cursed category through the 2010s is now, in the wake of The Last of Us, Fallout and this film, one of the most bankable pipelines in genre film and TV.
Variations & Related Tags
- #Video — general moving-image tag
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_(2026_film)
- https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/resident_evil_2026
- https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/resident-evil-box-office-reboot-opening-weekend-projection-1236861469/
- https://variety.com/2026/film/reviews/resident-evil-review-zach-cregger-1236863421/
- https://www.sweetyhigh.com/read/zach-cregger-resident-evil-first-reactions-091626
- https://northeasttimes.com/2026/09/16/critics-give-zach-cregger-s-resident-evil-reboot-rare-praise-ahead-of-theatrical/
- https://www.cbr.com/resident-evil-2026-movie-review/
- https://25yearslatersite.com/horror/news/zach-creggers-resident-evil-hits-theaters-this-week-as-early-reactions-run-wild/
- https://www.tvinsider.com/1278122/resident-evil-zach-cregger-plot-cast-release-date-trailer-details/