Resident Evil is back in cinemas with a story the games never told
Zach Cregger's reboot runs alongside the Raccoon City night of the second game without using any of its characters. It reached Portuguese cinemas on 17 September, rated M/16, at 93 minutes.
Eight films across twenty-four years, two reboots, and this is the first one where nobody will recognise the lead. That is the point.
The Resident Evil that opened in Portuguese cinemas on 17 September follows Bryan, a medical courier on his way to Raccoon City General when the outbreak starts. Not Leon, not Claire, none of the faces Capcom built over three decades. Zach Cregger, who wrote and directed it, set out the reasoning in an interview PlayStation itself published back in April: telling Leon’s story would be redundant, because the games already tell it well, so he wanted a story that could exist on the sidelines of one of them.
The game in question is Resident Evil 2, from 1998. The film unfolds on the same night, in the same city, in a contemporary setting rather than the original one, with what Cregger calls a couple of shifts for dramatic licence.
Who is in it
Austin Abrams plays the courier, having worked with Cregger on Weapons. Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry and Kali Reis play Umbrella scientists and enforcers. Shooting ran in the Czech Republic, between Prague and Litoměřice, from October last year, with Dariusz Wolski behind the camera. Budget of 80 million dollars, 93 minutes, rated M/16 in Portugal.
The tonal reference Cregger reached for is not any earlier film in the series, which he says he has never watched. It is Evil Dead II. He has also said this does not resemble Barbarian or Weapons, which for anyone who has seen those two reads less like a warning than like an invitation.
Why there was room for another one
The last reboot, Welcome to Raccoon City, landed in 2021 and worked with neither critics nor audiences, and the Netflix series was cancelled the following year. Constantin Film went back to the drawing board in 2022, hired Cregger in January 2025, and set off a bidding war between four studios for distribution, which Columbia won in March. PlayStation Productions came in as a producer, which is why the frankest conversation about the film ended up on Sony’s own blog rather than in a magazine.
It premiered at Fantastic Fest on 17 September and reached North American screens the next day, shot for IMAX. In Portugal it is already playing, which puts it up against the Spider-Man that has been filling rooms since the summer and August’s Ridley Scott release. Portuguese screenings and venues are listed on the Castello Lopes site.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Sony Pictures / Columbia Pictures
