At the Movies with James Phelan: A fresh take on the enduring zombie genre
Austin Abrams in Resident Evil.
Raised expectations are tough to deal with. The previous film from writer/director Zack Cregger was ‘Weapons’ and it was easily my favourite film of last year. Quite the feat as I grow increasingly averse to explicit horror the older I get.
Yet ‘Weapons’ was something else and considerably more than straight horror with its puzzle box structure, shifting perspectives and ability to generate humour in some truly dark freaky places.
Boasting a deserved Oscar-winning turn from Amy Madigan as the monstrous and instantly iconic Aunt Gladys, ‘Weapons’ was a film to establish Cregger as a talent to watch and follow.
I’m far from alone in awaiting his next move. And his decision to revive and reimagine a visceral and violent video game for the big screen is ostensibly an odd choice. The source material has already spawned a string of action films starring Milla Jovovich. Critics are snobby about the unheralded success and endurance of these films but the number of sequels alone points to a core audience for this zombie-blasting and relatively faithful take on the game.
Cregger’s best decision is to ignore that film universe and instead strip his vision down to one hapless organ courier embarking on a journey into the unknown. As played by ‘Weapons’ alumni Austin Abrams, the character of Bryan is no one’s idea of a hero. As he fields calls from a stressed girlfriend, he fatefully accepts a lucrative last-minute organ transfer between hospitals.
Strapping the vital cargo into his ill-equipped car for an icy drive to Racoon City Hospital, the audience can detect that Bryan both needs the money and is also avoiding going home. What Bryan can’t avoid, as his vehicle slaloms on snowy roads, is a woman who steps out into his path.
So far, it’s a pretty stock situation but everyman Bryan tries to do the right thing in every instance. It’s no hit and run for Bryan. Instead, he hits and stays around, trying to bring his own oddly resilient victim towards the hospital he is heading for. Again, the audience is delightfully ahead of Bryan’s very slow realisation that something is badly askew.
Cregger really shows us that this is a fresh situation for both the driver and the nascent zombie in the passenger seat. As she pathetically paws at Bryan, we see this is all new for her too. When a furious cop intervenes, the stakes ratchet upwards in this wondrously prolonged and sustained opening where the main character fumbles and mumbles his way through a spiralling sequence of heart-pounding jeopardy and jet-black jokes.
The restraint of this opening gradually fades out as the courier witnesses scenes that both expand and confound his frazzled brain. Dogs are revealed to be possessed by entities. Seemingly vanquished foes fuse their bodies together to form hair-raising hybrids. And Bryan also begins a movie-length rivalry with strategically placed padlocks that consistently conspire to defy him at inopportune moments.
As Bryan closes in on the city and his hospital destination, the scale of the film swells but my interest conversely dwindled a bit. I don’t want to paint it as a steep drop-off but it did feel like a slow-burn survivalist tale accelerated into an action film with some losses along the way.
Bryan meets new characters spouting exposition that we may not really have needed. And as the film enters its final throes, Bryan encounters mutations that seem too far removed from the mere zombies of hours earlier.
That said, some of the searing imagery on display here, like a tumbling ball of interlocked and fused bodies trundling through the woods, is genuinely the stuff of nightmares. Yet for me the first hour of this proved how Cregger can positively change mainstream movies, whereas the second hour is more about how mainstream movies may tame, contain and even corrupt Cregger into conformity.
I want the former. Who am I to ask for such things? Just a fan. Hell, I’d probably conform in a heartbeat. Because I even wanted a more upbeat ending for Bryan, a character we happily invested so heavily in. But maybe Bryan’s journey isn’t over yet…
