PlayStation, owned by the Sony Corporation, hawks its “Resident Evil” wares on the ample market-stall of Columbia Pictures, owned by the Sony Corporation. As the credits wrapped up, a group of young men familiar with “Resident Evil,” the game, stopped on the Screen Three stairs to chat. Was I reviewing the game or just the movie? Just the movie, I said. I wondered what they thought: one said that there was too much “f***.” I agreed. I was asked what I had thought about the references to the game within the movie. How about the line “Yeah. Video game! Yaha!”? That was just lame, one of the men said. But a study holding an old-fashioned black typewriter was important to players as a “safe room”; this was an “Easter Egg” for the crossover crowd, one suggested.
In any event, the last three scenes of “Resident Evil” (Columbia Pictures), showing now at the Montrose, are the strongest. The first utilises a lift shaft. It crushes the cinematographic perspective of “Speed” (1994) against the speed of the bugs in “Starship Troopers” (1997). The second is in a maternity ward which, like a dentist’s chair (which I considered in my review of “Insidious: Out of the Further” last month), should feature more in horror movies. Our gamer reaches the summit of the Raccoon City General Hospital where he will open the green cool-bag he has been clutching since a much earlier scene. “Sir,” one scientist says, “you need to leave the laboratory right now.” The brainiac is right that his pharmaceutical-company lab won’t survive. (The secret is a green fluid inside an unsheathed syringe. “All you gotta do is stick it anywhere in his body,” someone says, “the whole freaking thing.”)
Bryan, the single player, is “a glorified post-mate’s driver.” The filmmakers establish that he is an organ-transplant courier. (“Anyone order a kidney or a liver?” he says on one drop-off.) So when allocated a new assignment, he assumes his cargo is “some kid’s heart or some drunk’s liver.” He likes one-liners (“we’re not delivering a pizza here ma’am”). But then he encounters an infected humanoid. “Hey, lady, no, get back. Stop it! F***! Shit! Leave me alone! What the …. Uuuurrrggghhhhhh.” He chatters to himself. “What am I doing out here?” he asks. “The god-damned middle of the night.” “I’m out here, chased by all these crazy monster people. My socks are all wet. Psycho dogs.” A camper-van wedged between two trees blocks his escape. He has no choice but to enter on the passengers’ side and clamber across to exit on the driver’s side. A girl in green pyjamas cowers in a closet. “Hey there,” Bryan says, “I’m not gonna hurt you.” The girl looks up. “Help me,” she says. Her left calf and foot have mutated into a writhing of giant worms. “My mom bit me on the foot and I hid here. My foot hurts.” Her face splits to reveal a single cyclops eye surrounded by worms. “I didn’t shoot a little girl in the face?” Bryan says after killing her. “I like kids.”
The film is easier to parse once the game’s objective has been identified. The scene-setting stage is stuffed with the obvious: snowfall, an overturned police cruiser with its red-and-blue lights flashing, a rabid dog, an empty house lit by multiple bedside lamps, Scooby Doo-style headlights. The explanation of the problem and the task are delayed until mid-film. (“We have created a substance that can transform any organism to a hyper-evolved version of itself.” The medical bag contains “a neutralising base that’s going to allow us to complete the antidote.”) The filmmakers show us the hospital’s top floor: that’s where we’re heading.
The single-player format can feel hollow. There isn’t a second participant, a pal in a separate location across Montrose. The challenge is that the dialog becomes monolog and tends to monosyllabic with, yes, far too much profanity. All the other parts are cameos; they pop-up—as from the edge of a screen—as Bryan’s obstacles, problems, and puzzles. None are developed further than the minimum required for the plot. This approach is different from, say, “The Long Walk,” based on a Stephen King book, which I reviewed in September 2025.
And the events—just like in a game—are sequential and follow an a/b problem-to-solution format. No dexterity is required—no space for two solutions to be present at the same time. I’ll describe one sequence in detail as an example. Problem: Bryan doesn’t have the motorcar key he needs to escape. It’s hooked to a dead militiawoman’s belt. Her torso has become worm. But he needs the key. He reaches out. Her body is dragged away from him by an unseen force. He escapes (“holy shit, f***, shit,” etc.). A gate is padlocked. He’s chased by a cartwheeling worm-creature. He can’t shoot off the padlock. The head of a snake appears on the end of someone’s left arm. He sees a manhole cover. He pops it and jumps into the sewer. He catches his breath (“O.K., O.K., O.K.”). Solved.
I’ll think more about the problem of alternatives (in films based upon games) in future reviews. Every filmmaker leaves a multitude of options uncovered. But a game taken up a second time or by a different player would always introduce new solutions to its designer’s challenges.
Bryan evades his obstacles and arrives at the Raccoon Hospital basement. “I’m a courier,” he says on the intercom, “and I have this thing here. I was told you guys could use it.” “Listen to me,” a scientist says. “Bring it to me right now. You really should play it safe and take the stairs—not the elevator.” “You want me to take the stairs all the way up to the twenty-eighth floor?” Bryan replies. He is panting by the time he reaches the fourth. “Oh God, no one can do this,” he says—and hits the “call elevator” button.
Adam Poole
20th September 2026
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