Video game adaptations don’t often receive widely positive reception. It is, in fact, historically rare, as fans are often hypercritical of their faithfulness to the source material and understandably so. However, there has been significant improvement in recent times, and we’re currently witnessing another major win with Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil, the latest reboot of the acclaimed film series launched in 2002 by Paul W. S. Anderson. The movie has greatly pleased critics and fans, and it’s safe to say it deserves every penny of its hefty box office haul.
Starring Austin Abrams as the protagonist, Cregger’s Resident Evil took a bold yet refreshing approach to the games. It is markedly different fromAnderson‘s original films, which leaned heavily into gothic horror elements and attempted a loose overarching adaptation of the game’s world. Though not without flaws, Anderson’s films starring Milla Jovovich essentially worked, helping launch a film series that has cumulatively grossed $1.6 billion. Cregger favored a lighter approach, throwing in a good dose of humor to balance out the scares. Fans particularly commended its realistic in-game feel as the movie aimed to capture the claustrophobia familiar in survival-horror games.
Resident Evil was made on a $75 million budget and, after roughly seven weeks in theaters, has now become the third horror movie of the year to achieve the $400 million milestone. Given that a movie typically needs to gross three times its budget to break even, Resident Evil is a certified commercial hit. The movie is now wrapping up its successful theatrical run, but its financial success stands to grow even more as it becomes available to buy or rent via digital platforms beginning today, November 3rd.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Is Your Biggest Horror Nightmare? Elm Street · Chucky · Scream · The Conjuring
Four horror franchises. Four completely different ways of scaring you. One waits until you fall asleep. One makes sure nobody believes you. One is already in your group of friends. And one is in the house with your family. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually watch horror, and find out which nightmare was built for you.
😴Elm Street(Freddy Krueger)
🧸Chucky(Child’s Play)
📞Scream(Ghostface)
🕯️The Conjuring(The Warren Files)
01
Which horror scene makes you cover your eyes? Four classic images. One of them is worse than the others for you.
02
You are home alone and you hear a noise. First thought? Everybody has one. It arrives before you have decided anything.
03
Which horror movie rule would you break first? Everybody thinks they would survive. Almost nobody actually does.
04
Something genuinely frightening happens. What do you do? Not in a film. In your actual living room, tonight.
05
How do you actually watch a horror film? Be honest about this one. Nobody is checking.
06
Somebody offers you serious money. Which do you still refuse? The amount does not matter. There is one on this list you are not doing.
07
Which feeling stays with you a week after the film? Good horror does not stop when the credits do.
08
Something wakes you at 3am. What is the worst possibility? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your nightmare.
The Lights Just Went Out Your Nightmare Is…
Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath
your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what
it would leave behind.
A Nightmare on Elm Street · Since 1984
Elm Street
Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you
to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever
won that particular argument.
Freddy is horror’s cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot
guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your
own head is where this does its damage.
These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose
because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.
Child’s Play · Chucky · Since 1988
Chucky
Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the
person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.
Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you
describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You
know that feeling from real life too.
The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you
have met those adults.
By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.
Scream · Ghostface · Since 1996
Scream
Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost
certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.
Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be
somebody who was at the party.
You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the
same way you watch films.
The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are
the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.
The Conjuring · The Warren Files · Since 2013
The Conjuring
Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people
asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.
The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary
room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than
personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are
the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one
standing in the hallway.
Where and When Will ‘Resident Evil’ Debut on Streaming?
For Resident Evil‘s home on a subscription-based streaming service, Netflix gets that honor thanks to its exclusive streaming deal with Sony Pictures Releasing. The terms of that deal will bring Resident Evil to Netflix about 120 days after its theatrical debut, which falls somewhere in mid-January. Netflix has yet to confirm an official date, but an announcement is expected soon as the movie is now in the last lap of its theatrical run.
Resident Evil co-stars Zach Cherry (Fallout), as well as professional fighters Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser. There is no talk of a sequel yet, but Cregger has shared that a concept is already being mapped out. Stay tuned to Collider for updates.
Release Date
September 18, 2026
Runtime
95 Minutes
Producers
Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan, Miri Yoon, Robert Kulzer, Roy Lee, Victor Hadida, Zach Cregger
