In celebration of the Resident Evil franchise’s 30th anniversary, I decided to watch all the live-action movies. To date, there have been seven live-action Resident Evil movies, with the first six starring Milla Jovovich and led by Paul W.S. Anderson, who directed four of them. The seventh was a failed attempt at a reboot in the form of Welcome to Raccoon City. All seven movies are terrible, but sometimes in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way.
I remember when the first Resident Evil movie came out. As a fan of the video games, I was stoked to watch it. It left me completely and utterly baffled. The first Resident Evil movie takes elements from the video games but for some reason decided not to actually adapt their stories, instead delivering its own zany sci-fi/horror/action zombie story with RE‘s skin and nothing more.
Leaked Resident Evil Movie Plot Details Tease Its Placement Within the Game Series
A recent leak from an insider reveals the upcoming Resident Evil movie’s plot details, possibly revealing its place in the game series timeline.
The first Resident Evil movie sets the tone for a string of awful films that make occasional reference to the games they’re based on, but often fall flat on their face in their attempts to pay homage to them. But there is some enjoyment to be had from these movies, as bad as they are.
This article will have MAJOR SPOILERS for all of the Resident Evil movies
My Name is Alice, And I Wish I Could Forget These Movies
The first six live-action Resident Evil films are Resident Evil, Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, Retribution, and The Final Chapter. They all focus on an original character named Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, who gets superpowers from the T-Virus and goes on a crusade against Umbrella.
The first Resident Evil movie has a fun opening where we actually get to see the start of a T-Virus outbreak in one of Umbrella’s secret underground labs, complete with elevator decapitation. Then we see Alice waking up in a mansion, and at first, it seems like there may be at least some attempt to adapt the original game by featuring a Spencer Estate-esque mansion. That’s then quickly thrown out the window as Umbrella operatives arrive and the action immediately goes to the aforementioned underground lab, known as the Hive.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
The first Resident Evil movie certainly has its iconic moments. The Red Queen AI’s “You’re all going to die down here” line is fun, and the laser hallway is as hilarious as it is ridiculous. Capcom itself has made numerous references to the Resident Evil movie’s Red Queen and laser hallway in the games, with Leon having zero trouble getting through the trap — much unlike the ill-fated Umbrella soldiers that are completely eviscerated by it.
After fighting a horrendous CGI licker, Alice winds up as the sole survivor, her friend Matt is put into the “Nemesis” program, and we get a cliffhanger that shows Raccoon City has been overrun by zombies.
The Resident Evil Movies Constantly Fail to Capitalize on Their Cliffhanger Endings
Resident Evil: Apocalypse follows up where the original movie leaves off, and in fact marks one of the only times that a cliffhanger is properly followed up in a Resident Evil movie. Apocalypse cranks up the action and incorporates more elements from the games, like the Nemesis monster and characters like Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira, but it’s dragged down by its headache-inducing editing and shoddy writing.
One of the unintentionally funnier moments in the movie is when Dr. Charles Ashford exclaims that his daughter is at school, the movie then cuts to show her in a classroom, and then does an establishing shot complete with text when the characters were leaving the location that had already been established anyway.
In any case, Apocalypse ends with Alice’s friends breaking her out of an Umbrella lab, but it’s teased that the corporation has some kind of control over her. The next movie, Extinction, then decides that the T-Virus actually caused massive environmental changes to the point where it effectively becomes Mad Max with zombies, which isn’t nearly as cool as it sounds. Extinction ends with Alice getting a clone army of herself that is immediately dealt with in the first 10 minutes of Afterlife. Afterlife ends with the heroes seemingly killing Albert Wesker, only to be attacked by Umbrella, including a mind-controlled Jill Valentine, ala Resident Evil 5. Retribution wraps this conflict up in its first 10 minutes, brings back Wesker, and fails to include supporting characters like Claire Redfield or the unfortunately-named K-Mart that were built up in the last two movies.
Retribution is, to its credit, the best of the live-action Resident Evil movies. It adds Barry Burton, Leon S. Kennedy, and Ada Wong to the mix. It brings back fan favorite characters that were killed off in earlier movies, and it features a fun gimmick where Alice and co. have to fight their way through specialized biomes (it’s very similar to the plot of the Resident Evil: Underworld novel by S.D. Perry). And it ends on a high note, with Jill, Wesker, Ada, Leon, and Alice standing on the White House, ready to fight in an epic, final battle for humanity.
SO IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when The Final Chapter just skips the epic final battle, and kills everyone off off-screen except for Alice. The franchise skipped its big climactic fight. Imagine if the eighth Harry Potter movie skipped over the Battle of Hogwarts. Five movies built to a final showdown that you don’t even get to see.
The movie brings back Claire, who makes no mention of her brother Chris or K-Mart (and if she did and I’m mistaken, my eyes were too glazed over to process the information). It also features Milla Jovovich attempting to play an elderly version of Alice, with a bad make-up job and potentially the worst performance in the series. Imagine the territory that takes in.
Welcome to Raccoon City
As someone that hates the other live-action Resident Evil movies, I was ecstatic when it was revealed that the franchise was getting a reboot. Not only a reboot, but one that would be faithful to the source material. Welcome to Raccoon City is definitely more faithful to the source material, but it’s still not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.
Instead of simply adapting the first game I don’t know why people won’t just adapt the first game a mansion full of monsters and traps is cool, Welcome to Raccoon City smashes the plots of the first two games together. It doesn’t work. It also completely fails to make Raccoon City feel like a “city” or even a small town. It instead feels like the only people that live there are the main characters.
Welcome to Raccoon City is full of nods to the games, but it’s lifeless, and the characters aren’t anything like their video game equivalents. It ends on a cliffhanger that will never get resolved because the Resident Evil movies are getting another reboot, and hopefully one that finally delivers the kind of movie that the franchise deserves.
Save Us Zach Cregger
The 2026 Resident Evil movie is scheduled to hit theaters on September 18 and is being directed by Zach Cregger, who made the award-winning Barbarian and Weapons. The new Resident Evil movie will once again not be a direct adaptation of the first video game, but it still sounds like it’s going to be a significant step up from the other films.
The Zach Cregger Resident Evil movie will star Austin Abrams as a medical courier named Bryan, with Paul Walter Hauser cast as a character named Carl. Zach Cherry and Kali Reis are set to appear in undisclosed roles, while Johnno Wilson has been cast as a character named Max. Very little in the way of specific details have been released so far, but the simple fact that Cregger is at the helm already makes it highly likely that the 2026 Resident Evil movie will be the best in the series to date.
