What you need to know...

Count your bullets. Count your breaths.

Best known for the slow-building dread of Barbarian and the fractured nightmare of Weapons, Zach Cregger swaps original horror for one of gaming's most beloved franchises with Resident Evil, arriving at Everyman on 18 September 2026. A self-confessed lifelong player of the series, Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum) have built an entirely new story that unfolds alongside the events of the 1998 game Resident Evil 2.

At the centre of it all is Bryan (Austin Abrams, reuniting with Cregger after Weapons), a medical courier whose routine delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital collides with a viral outbreak already tearing through the streets. With no combat training and nothing but whatever he can scavenge, he's forced deeper into Umbrella Corporation territory, crossing paths with scientists Dave (Zach Cherry) and Pauline (Kali Reis), fellow survivor Carl (Paul Walter Hauser) and Umbrella enforcer Max (Johnno Wilson), each with their own reasons for still being alive.

Cregger has been open about wanting the film to feel like playing the games rather than simply referencing them: pistols traded up for shotguns, healing items rationed, danger escalating room by room as the group pushes from the streets into Umbrella's underground facilities. He's cited Evil Dead II as a closer tonal touchstone than his own back catalogue, and leaned hard on practical effects and stunt work over CGI to keep the outbreak feeling tangible and dangerous, shooting largely on location in Prague.

Expect a queasy, hands-on kind of horror, one that treats every bullet and every breath as something to be fought for. 

Did you know?

To bring the film's rooftop zombie attacks to life without CGI, Cregger's crew rigged oversized, blood-filled props to drop from cranes onto the street below. During filming, one such prop missed star Austin Abrams by a single step, a near miss Cregger later said would have killed him had he been standing anywhere else.

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