For a franchise built around opening doors you probably should not open, the latest Resident Evil movie may finally understand what makes those moments so stressful.
Sony Pictures screened the first 30 minutes of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil for audiences and press on September 1, with events held in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas ahead of a live Reddit Q&A with the filmmaker. The full movie was not screened, so these are not reviews of the finished film. But the response to what was shown is already giving horror fans plenty to talk about.
Early reactions have praised the footage for its scares, tension, unexpectedly funny moments and, perhaps most importantly for longtime fans, the way it actually feels like playing a Resident Evil game.
The Playlist described the opening as packed with dread and sudden scares, while noting that Cregger’s sense of humor from Barbarian and Weapons is still very much intact. One attendee writing for The Fear Review said the footage produced multiple genuine jumps during the roughly half-hour presentation.
But the most interesting thing Cregger revealed may have come after the footage stopped.
You’re Going to Know How Many Bullets Are Left
Video game adaptations usually face the same problem. You can bring over the characters, monsters and locations, but how do you translate the anxiety of actually playing the game?
Cregger appears to have taken that question very seriously.
During the Reddit Q&A, he was asked about the resource-management mechanics that have been part of Resident Evilsince the beginning. His answer revealed that Bryan’s ammunition will not simply be an endless Hollywood supply of bullets.
“You will know how many bullets are in his gun. YOU will care when he misses a shot.”
Cregger also teased that audiences will remain aware of Bryan’s physical condition as the story continues, essentially finding a cinematic way to replicate the feeling of watching a character’s health disappear while their supplies get smaller.
For anyone who has ever wandered through a Resident Evil hallway with three handgun rounds, one green herb and a monster breathing somewhere nearby, that approach should sound familiar.
We previously wrote about Cregger’s desire to make Resident Evil feel like the audience is holding the controller. The new footage and his latest comments suggest that idea goes much deeper than first-person camera shots or Easter eggs. He is trying to recreate the decisions that make survival horror stressful in the first place.
We previously wrote about Cregger’s desire to make Resident Evil feel like the audience is holding the controller. The new footage and his latest comments suggest that idea goes much deeper than first-person camera shots or Easter eggs.
That means ammunition matters. Injuries matter. Missing a shot matters.
And suddenly a gun with five bullets becomes much more frightening than a machine gun with five hundred.
The Camera Is Playing the Game Too
The gameplay influence also extends to how Cregger shoots the movie.
The director has explained that he frequently keeps the camera behind Bryan, allowing audiences to enter and examine spaces at roughly the same time the character does. Instead of showing viewers exactly where a threat is hiding, the frame leaves enough empty space for your eyes to start searching for it.
Cregger said the games influenced not only the movie’s content, but its “lens, the visual language, the movement.”
That distinction could prove important.
Resident Evil does not need another movie that simply contains zombies, Umbrella references and familiar iconography. It needs to capture that awful moment when you walk into a room and immediately realize something about it is wrong.
According to people who attended the preview, some of that video game language is immediately noticeable. One attendee described camera movements that felt similar to moving an analog stick toward a suspicious sound offscreen, while others specifically praised the first-person perspective and item-management elements.
And Apparently, the First 30 Minutes Are the Easy Part
The footage follows Austin Abrams as Bryan, a medical courier whose trip toward Raccoon City puts him directly in the path of a rapidly worsening T-virus disaster.
Cregger says the story is deliberately more straightforward than the puzzle-box structures of Barbarian and Weapons. Instead of jumping between timelines or groups of characters, Resident Evil stays closely attached to one increasingly unlucky man trying to get from one place to another.
Cregger’s description of the plot is wonderfully simple:
“Dude’s got to get from point A to point B. Shit gets really bad.”
And apparently the footage audiences just watched represents Bryan having a relatively good night.
Cregger told the preview audience that things only become worse from there, describing the movie as one heavily adrenalized situation leading directly into another. His goal is to keep the experience “chaotic, primal and grounded,” while focusing primarily on the T-virus rather than some of the increasingly fantastical elements that entered the games later in the franchise.
That could explain why the early footage appears to be landing with viewers.
Cregger is not treating Bryan like a superhero who has entered Raccoon City to clean it up. He is treating him like a player who just loaded a new save file and immediately realized they are dangerously underprepared.
A New Story Inside a Very Familiar Nightmare
This Resident Evil is not a direct adaptation of any single game.
Sony describes it as an all-new story centered on Bryan, a medical courier who becomes trapped in “a non-stop race for survival” as one catastrophic night falls apart around him. Austin Abrams leads the cast alongside Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser. Cregger directs from a screenplay written with Shay Hatten.
That decision has understandably made some fans cautious. Characters such as Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield are a massive part of what people associate with Resident Evil.
But Cregger seems less interested in recreating their stories than recreating the experience surrounding them.
The locked doors. The limited supplies. The strange rooms. The feeling that something is standing just outside your field of view.
And now, apparently, the horrifying realization that you just wasted one of your last bullets.
We still have only seen reactions to the first 30 minutes, so there is plenty of movie left for Resident Evil to prove itself. Early enthusiasm is not the same thing as a final review.
But after years of filmmakers trying to figure out how to turn Resident Evil into a movie, Cregger may be approaching the problem from the opposite direction.
Instead of asking how to adapt the story of a Resident Evil game, he seems to be asking how to make sitting in a movie theater feel like playing one.
That could make all the difference.
Resident Evil arrives exclusively in theaters on September 18, 2026. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Resident Evil popcorn bucket available.