I screamed in this movie. Out loud, in a theater, more than once. That hasn’t happened in years, and Zach Cregger is the reason.
His trick with jump scares is patience. He builds the tension to the exact second you brace for it, then holds one beat longer. You relax, just slightly. That’s when he hits you. Knowing how it works doesn’t make it work any less.
Brian is the other reason this clicks. The humor runs through his character and it’s genuinely funny, not the nervous chuckle stuff horror usually settles for. The film takes itself seriously without taking itself too seriously. That sounds like a small distinction until you count how many horror movies miss in one direction or the other. The gore is fun. The writing is fun. The situations these people stumble into are so stupid that laughing is the only response available, and the movie knows it.
Pacing is strong, which matters more in horror than people admit. It keeps moving through a real variety of locations, so you’re never stuck staring at the same hallway from three angles for ninety minutes.
The ending goes a little cheesy. Not Fast and Furious 9 cheesy, nowhere close, so I’ll let it slide. It’s the kind of cheese you forgive on the walk to the car.
What I walked out thinking was: give me more of these. There’s a version of this world that could build out the way Guardians of the Galaxy did, where tone is the selling point and the characters carry it forward. The foundation is right here.
Resident Evil is a blast: scary when it wants to be, funny when it needs to be, and smart about the difference. See it in a packed theater.
