Test audiences found Resident Evil too funny, so Zach Cregger cut the jokes

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil reached US theaters on September 18, and it is not the movie fans of the old series expected. Instead of retelling a game, the writer-director of Barbarian and Weapons invented a new hero and dropped him into the night Raccoon City fell. Sony Pictures released it, with Constantin Film and PlayStation Productions producing; Japan follows on October 9.

“I’m not going to tell Leon’s story, because Leon’s story is told in the games,” Cregger said early on. His touchstone was Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II rather than any previous adaptation, and he calls the result a “love letter to the games.”

A courier on the worst night in Raccoon City

Bryan is a medical courier driving a package to Raccoon City General Hospital, high in the snowy Colorado mountains. On the way he hits a pedestrian, and before long he discovers the town has been overrun by a virus that turns people into monsters. His only way out is to reach the hospital lab and hand over his cargo to scientists racing for a cure.

Cregger set the story in parallel with Resident Evil 2, on the same night, but in the present day. He also borrowed the mood and pacing of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil 4, aiming for a film that feels like holding the controller.

Who is in it

• Austin Abrams as Bryan
• Paul Walter Hauser as Paul, a scientist at Umbrella
• Zach Cherry as Carl, another Umbrella scientist
• Kali Reis as Maxine, Umbrella’s enforcer
• Will Merrick and Griffin Newman as Dave and Wade
• Emily Piggford as Dr. Maria Stokes
• Sara Paxton as the voice of Bryan’s girlfriend, Michelle

Abrams had a small part in Weapons, and that was enough: Cregger says that watching him in the scene where his character breaks into a house, he saw exactly what he needed for his lead. Maxine was originally written for a man before the part went to a former world boxing champion. Listen closely, too — the voice on the intercom belongs to Cregger himself.

Making it

The project set off a bidding war among four studios, including Warner Bros. and Netflix, before Sony won in March 2025. Cregger co-wrote the script with Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 4) and freely admits he has never seen any of the earlier live-action films.

Cameras rolled in Prague from October 10, 2025, to January 22, 2026, with Dariusz Wolski (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Martian) as director of photography. The Holladay brothers, Hays and Ryan, who scored Weapons, wrote the music — though Cregger left the scariest stretches silent: “When you’re not holding their hand, they feel like anything could happen.”

Then came the test screenings. “People really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny,” Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter. He stripped out as many jokes as he could, and scores went up. “There’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss. A little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie.” The finished cut runs 94 minutes on a budget of about $75 million.

How it landed

With 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 79 on Metacritic, Resident Evil has overtaken Exit 8 as the best-reviewed video game movie on both sites, and its B+ CinemaScore is the franchise’s best. TheWrap’s William Bibbiani called it Cregger’s best film yet; The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey praised a “funny, delirious” reboot, and The Guardian’s Jesse Hassenger a “wild rollercoaster ride.” The AP’s Jocelyn Noveck found the escalating action tiring late on, while Time Out’s Phil de Semlyen gave three stars to a film he found more “goofy and good-looking” than frightening.

Tracking pointed to a $40–50 million US opening. Instead it made $60 million domestically and $108.3 million worldwide, a record for both the series and its director, and had reached $197 million by September 27. Cregger, for his part, says he already has ideas for where the story could go next.