Cregger’s Resident Evil Breaks a Record Without the Games

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil opens September 18, 2026, at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest critic score ever for a video game movie. The film has 139 reviews. It also has no Leon Kennedy, no Claire Redfield, and no plot lifted from a Capcom disc.

That gap is the whole argument. Critics are treating a sideline story in Raccoon City as the first great Resident Evil movie. A loud slice of the fandom spent the summer saying it was not a Resident Evil movie at all.

Resident Evil Sits 10 Points Clear of Sonic 3

Rotten Tomatoes lists a 96% Tomatometer from 139 reviews, with a 90% Popcornmeter from more than 500 verified audience ratings. The previous high for a video game movie was Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at 86% in 2024. Werewolves Within, Josh Ruben’s 2021 horror comedy, also sits at 86%. The new film is a full 10 points clear of both.

THE OPENING-DAY SCOREBOARD

• Tomatometer: 96% Fresh from 139 critic reviews, Certified Fresh.
• Popcornmeter: 90% from more than 500 verified ratings.
• Metascore: 80, generally favorable, with zero negative notices in the first 38 reviews.
• Runtime and rating: 90 minutes, R, for bloody violence, language, and gore.

Metacritic’s Metascore of 80 from 38 critics breaks down as 36 positive, 2 mixed, and 0 negative. That is a different scale from Rotten Tomatoes, and it still puts the film ahead of every other live-action game movie the site tracks, including 2026’s Exit 8 at 71.

Cregger already had 93% for Weapons and 92% for Barbarian. Resident Evil is now his highest Tomatometer. His only other directed feature, the 2009 comedy Miss March, sits at 5%. The horror run is three films, three scores in the 90s.

Cregger Refused to Cast Leon on Purpose

Cregger wrote the script with Shay Hatten. Austin Abrams, who worked with him on Weapons, plays a medical courier named Bryan whose drop-off at Raccoon City General Hospital turns into a night of infected monsters. Umbrella is in it. The T-virus is in it. The famous heroes of the games are not.

He has been saying that out loud for more than a year. The games, he argues, already told Leon’s story well. Casting someone else, cutting his hair, and feeding him new lines would only shrink the character. He wanted a schlub on foot, out of shape, moving from room to room with limited ammo, the way a player feels when the map closes in.

I think I was naive. I thought fans of these games, like me, would be thrilled that somebody was coming along and turning Resident Evil into a survival horror movie. I did not really appreciate the sentiment that, we’ve been waiting forever for Leon’s story. And I appreciate that, and I’m sorry that’s not the story I’m bringing.

Zach Cregger, director, in an IGN interview

He has also said he has not watched the earlier live-action films, because they did not look like the Resident Evil he loved. That is the same complaint some fans now aim at him. He knows it. Late in the rollout he stopped explaining and told people to see the movie, then judge.

Why Did Fans Call It Fake Resident Evil?

The first trailer did not show Jill, Ada, or a cop in a leather jacket. Comment threads filled with the same two questions. Where are the characters. Where are the monsters we already know. Cregger said he was not prepared for that volume of anger, and that he had been naive to expect a love letter to the feel of the games to be enough.

The movie still uses the toys. Trailers showed Abrams digging through drawers for shotgun shells, hitting padlocks, and finding a typewriter in what looks like a save room. There are first-person bursts that nod at Resident Evil 7 and 8. Critics who liked it kept saying the same thing in different words: it plays like a game even when it will not retell one.

IGN’s Tom Jorgensen told skeptics to set aside their idea of what a Resident Evil movie should be and lock in for what Cregger actually made, a film that adapts the spirit of the games rather than the letter. Jordan Farley, writing for GamesRadar+, went further and called it the best video game movie, full stop, even without Leon or Claire. Brandon Yu, in The New York Times, treated Abrams as a one-man show whose shrieks and muttered disbelief do the comic work.

The knock that keeps coming back is the jokes. Some early viewers who sat through preview screenings said Abrams quips through scares that should have stayed quiet, and that the last stretch is thinner than the opening chase. That is a taste fight about tone. The identity fight is older, and it is about mascots.

WHAT CREGGER CHANGED ON PURPOSE

• The hero: Bryan, a courier, instead of Leon, Claire, Jill, or Ada.
• The year: Modern day, 2026, with an iPhone in the character’s pocket, not 1998.
• The weather: Snow, which Cregger wanted for the look, even though Resident Evil 2 is not a snow game.
• The plot: An original night in Raccoon City that runs beside the outbreak, not a remake of any one title.

He has called the film a kind of Resident Evil 10 that would not feel weird if it were a game. He also said that if he had photocopied a beloved plot, the same people would have been angry when the casting or the dialogue landed wrong. There is no version of this job, in his telling, that makes everyone happy.

Snow, an iPhone, and a Courier Named Bryan

At San Diego Comic-Con he put the timeline on the table. The film is not a one-for-one of Resident Evil 2. It is not the 1990s. It snows. Bryan has a phone. The story still uses Umbrella, the T-virus, and a city falling in one night. He took those liberties, he said, because they made a better movie, not a better wiki page.

A Billion-Dollar Series That Never Cleared 40%

Paul W.S. Anderson’s live-action run, with Milla Jovovich as Alice, made real money and almost no critical peace. The six films he wrote and produced, plus Johannes Roberts’s 2021 reboot Welcome to Raccoon City, built a theatrical series that has grossed more than $1.2 billion worldwide. The best Tomatometer in that pile was Resident Evil: The Final Chapter at 39%.

LIVE-ACTION RESIDENT EVIL ON ROTTEN TOMATOES

The 2002 original still holds the old audience high at 67%. Cregger’s film has already passed that on the Popcornmeter. On Metacritic, The Final Chapter peaked at 49 among the Anderson films. Welcome to Raccoon City scored 44. The new one is at 80. The box office machine and the review machine were never in the same room.

Video Game Movies Climbed From Angry Birds to Here

For a long stretch, the crown for best-reviewed video game movie was a punchline. The Angry Birds Movie 2 took it at 72% in 2019. Werewolves Within, adapted from a little-seen VR title, jumped to 86% in 2021 because it was small and specific. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 tied that mark as a big studio film in 2024. Then this.

HOW THE RECORD MOVED

1. 2019: The Angry Birds Movie 2 sits at 72% and, for a time, leads the category.
2. 2021: Werewolves Within reaches 86% and becomes the critic high.
3. 2024: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 matches 86% and becomes the highest-profile holder.
4. 2026: Resident Evil opens at 96% and clears the field by 10 points.

Under those four titles the list falls off fast. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is at 69%. Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is at 68%. Gran Turismo is at 65%. The first Sonic film and Mortal Kombat 2 share 64%. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a huge hit with audiences, is at 59% with critics. Most of the category still lives below the Fresh line. Cregger did not invent a healthy genre. He jumped it.

The Rights Lived at Constantin, Not Capcom

German company Constantin Film holds the live-action rights. Columbia Pictures is distributing. PlayStation Productions is on the production roster. Capcom built the games, more than 200 million copies since the 1996 original, and Cregger says the developer never called him.

“Nobody from Capcom ever reached out to me, ever, in any way,” he said. Constantin declined to comment when asked about the arrangement. Online, fans have long blamed the Constantin deal for films that sit next to the games without sharing their timeline. Cregger’s movie is still a Constantin picture. It is also the first one critics have treated as survival horror instead of Alice versus the apocalypse.

He has already drawn a line around the job. Resident Evil is the franchise exception. He has said he is not going to tackle other people’s brands after this, and that he wanted the resources to make the Resident Evil movie he would actually want to watch. Sony put about $75 million into that bet and is opening it in roughly 3,500 North American theaters.

Thursday Previews Already Beat the Franchise Record

Thursday previews, which began at 2 p.m. in the United States on September 17, are estimated at $8 million to $9 million. The previous franchise preview high was The Final Chapter at $1 million. That Thursday haul also cleared Cregger’s own Weapons, which did $5.75 million in previews on the way to a $43.5 million opening.

Sony has projected a $40 million domestic opening for the September 18-20 weekend. Third-party tracking had been in the $40 million to $50 million range, and some desks pushed higher after the reviews landed. A $40 million frame would be the biggest opening the theatrical series has posted. The weekend numbers are still being counted.

Cregger, at the Los Angeles premiere on September 15, said he felt confident because he had seen the movie and liked it. He also left room for the possibility that he was delusional. The Tomatometer is not delusional. Neither is a Thursday that already paid off the old preview record. The remaining argument is the one he cannot score on a chart: whether the people who wanted Leon will accept a courier in the snow as the Resident Evil movie they were owed.