Zach Cregger's Resident Evil opened in UK and US cinemas on 18 September, and within a weekend it had done something no film in the series had managed: it won the critics. It took $60 million in North America over its first three days, the franchise's best start, and $108 million worldwide.
What is Resident Evil (2026) about?
It is not an adaptation of any single game. Cregger, who made Barbarian and Weapons, wrote it with Shay Hatten as an original story set during the events of Resident Evil 2. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier with a delivery to make in Raccoon City on the night the outbreak takes hold, and the film stays with him through that single night. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser play Umbrella scientists; Johnno Wilson is an Umbrella enforcer. It is a clean break from the six Paul W.S. Anderson films with Milla Jovovich, and it runs an hour and a half.
How has it been received?
Better than anything the series has known. On 22 September it stood at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 228 reviews, with an audience score of 91%; Rotten Tomatoes notes that no earlier Resident Evil film had scored above 40%. Metacritic has it at 81 from 47 reviews.
The praise is specific. Little White Lies argued that Cregger has turned the mechanics of the games, the dark rooms, the slow doors, the rationed ammunition, into lean horror rather than the noisy action of the earlier films, and that Bryan works precisely because he is no action hero. Rolling Stone called it one of the best video game adaptations yet, and noted that it does not lean on Easter eggs to get there. The reservations are consistent too. Empire, while calling it the best Resident Evil film so far, found the story thin, and several early reviews flagged an abrupt ending and jokes that occasionally let the tension out.
How did it do at the box office?
The $60 million North American opening, including $8.8 million from Thursday previews, is the biggest for an R-rated video game adaptation. It overtakes the $60.1 million that Resident Evil: Afterlife took across its whole North American run, until now the high mark for an R-rated game film, and it knocked Practical Magic 2 off the top spot. Against a budget reported at between $75 and $80 million, it is a comfortable start.
What comes next?
Nothing is confirmed. Asked about a sequel the day before release, Cregger said there are always ideas, and that he would wait to see how this one was received before committing to any of them. The reception has now answered that part. No UK streaming date has been announced.
Halidom's video game editions include Prime 1 Studio's Resident Evil 4 Leon S. Kennedy and PureArts' life-size Nemesis.