Resident Evil reboot is as funny as it is disgusting, which is a good thing

REVIEW Resident Evil review: This reboot is as funny as it is disgusting, and that's a good thing BARRY HERTZ PUBLISHED YESTERDAY Open this photo in gallery: Austin Abrams stars as harried medical courier Bryan, for whom things go terribly wrong on the job. DUŠAN MARTINČEK/SUPPLIED COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. Resident Evil Directed by Zach Cregger Written by Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten Starring Austin Abrams Classification 14A; 95 minutes Opens in theatres Sept. 18 Critic’s Pick So far as any video-game adaptation about monsters and the machine guns that annihilate them can hold a special place in my heart, the Resident Evil franchise has managed to occupy a small corner of my woefully clogged arteries stretching back to 2002. That’s the year when B-movie power couple Paul W.S. Anderson (director) and Milla Jovovich (star) delivered their first big-screen version of the shoot-’em-up video game, which follows increasingly disastrous efforts to contain the outbreak of a virus that turns people into zombies. It is all professionally done but knowingly dumb fun, the gross-out action frequently enlivened by how Anderson utilizes, or rather defiles, various Toronto landmarks, where the films have long been shot. (The franchise’s second instalment, 2004’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse, memorably features Jovovich rappelling up the side of City Hall – try to top that, Brad Bradford.) Like most good, or good-enough, things, the Anderson/Jovovich iteration of Resident Evil has run its course, and now it’s time for horror’s new hot shot, Zach Cregger, to come in and resurrect the big-screen brand. On paper, the idea might feel like one step forward for the franchise but two steps back for the filmmaker. This is the director, after all, whose 2025 hit Weapons vaulted star Amy Madigan to the Oscars stage. Is Resident Evil ready, or even worthy, to be given Cregger’s prestige touch? Even worse, on the flip side, is Cregger’s interest in the series evidence that he’s not as ambitious as Weapons and his 2022 debut Barbarian made him out to be? These are all big, scary, existential questions for a series featuring a character named “Scagdead” and another who vomits acid. Open this photo in gallery: Abrams (left), Andrea Miltnerova and Johnno Wilson star in this wildly entertaining Point A to Point B journey. DUŠAN MARTINČEK/SUPPLIED Fortunately,…