Since this is the last week of October, here’s the last of my Recommendation posts focusing on Horror-themed stuff to capitalise on the build-up to Halloween.
It’s not necessarily the last Horror Recommendation I’ll ever post, but until next October, they probably won’t be this topical or thematic…
I have not seen the 2026 Resident Evil movie – which is in theatres as I write this post. Despite the likely inevitable “But It’s Not Like the Games!” that any adaptation gets from certain corners of the fanbase, it has been prety well received and, in fact, it’s currently the top-rated video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes.
For what it’s worth, that’s based on critic reviews. There are several that have notably higher audience scores.
I have, however, seen at least three of the Resident Evil movies from the 2000s through 2010s directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The first one was actually pretty good, but then they just sort of turned into a vehicle for Anderson to go ‘Look how hot and awesome my wife is.”
Which, to be fair, I get. If I were married to Milla Jovovich, I’d never shut up about it.
I think part of the reason they got progressively worse is because they got progressively less like the games and just sort of went off the rails.
While the new movie has been praised for capturing the spirit of the games – I’ve seen it described as being essentially a movie about a Resident Evil player who ends up having to live through the games in real life – it is a completely original side story presumably happening concurrently with the events of the games (specifically, I believe Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, the ones actually taking place in Raccoon City during the T-virus outbreak).
Which brings us to a movie that is probably my quintessential Guilty Pleasure watch: 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.
Notably more faithful to the games than the Anderson movies, Welcome to Raccoon City is an adaptation/abridgement of the original Resident Evil (the one taking place inside the Spencer Mansion) and Resident Evil 2 (dealing with the wider outbreak).
To get this right out of the way: No, Welcome to Raccoon City isn’t a particularly good movie. But I love it, because it’s stupid in the same way the first couple games were stupid.
Although the more recent games and the remakes of the classic games have been more self-serious and legitimately scary, Resident Evil as a whole has always been pretty goofy: Chris punches boulders, Leon suplexes dudes, and even the more serious games still have silly quips from the characters, moments of levity, and goofy easter eggs.
And let us not forget that this is the series that gave us such immortal dialogue as Jill Sandwiches and Masters of Unlocking.
Incidentally, whenever I’m playing a video game or tabletop RPG as a character who can lockpick, you can bet I’ll be referring to them as a Master of Unlocking.
All of which is to say, Welcome to Raccoon City is absolutely an entertaining movie. There are absolutely funny moments in movie – and a fair few of them are actually deliberate.
And, yes, there’s a Jill Sandwich joke…
Because Welcome to Raccoon City is adapting the first two games simultaneously – there’s one plotline largely focusing on Claire and Leon in the Raccoon City police station and one following Jill, Chris and the S.T.A.R.S team going into the Spencer Mansion. This means the plot feels a little crowded, to the point that Jill, who is probably the face of the franchise, feels like she’s barely in the movie.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City: Constantin Film and Screen Gems. image via IMDB.
Which felt like a weird decision to me.
Focusing on one of the other probably would have been more effective. A movie set solely in the mansion could have really leaned into the dark, claustrophobic, enemies-jumping-out-from-shadows angle. And a movie set in Raccoon City proper could have leaned fully into the Zombie Apocalypse angle – though the outbreak as depicted in the movie we got is still pretty effective.
Though Welcome to Raccoon City is a fairly low budget ($25 million) movie and does feel like pretty much a B-movie throughout, there are some scenes that are at least scary-ish. We see a few people get infected and start turning before the outbreak starts in earnest and those scenes are pretty effective, especially before the characters fully comprehend what exactly is happening and are just left with a vague but growing sense of ‘Something is Clearly Wrong.’
On the other hand, the CGI for anything more substantial than a basic humanoid zombie aren’t great, but that does at least feed into the cheesy, ‘Faithful to the Source Material’ aspect that’s probably my favourite part of the movie.
Despite being pretty direct adaptations of the games, the way Leon was depicted in Welcome to Raccoon City has been a point of contention.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City: Constantin Film and Screen Gems. image via IMDB.
While Leon being a rookie who is having the worst possible first day on the job is accurate to the lore of the games (at least the original version of 2), in Welcome to Raccoon City, he’s presented as more of an actively bumbling comic relief character that basically everyone is mean to, rather than competent but struggling in a situation he fairly has no way to possibly prepare for.
The silver lining here is that we get some pretty funny jokes from the other characters about how the S. must stand for ‘Stupid.’
[FYI: It’s actually ‘Scott.’]
Still, he does become at least enough of a badass to actually be helpful by the end. And, at least broadly, I can understand the need for a comic relief character in the cast. Granted, I’m not a huge Resident Evil fan, or I don’t really have enough skin in this to be personally offended that the character they did make the comic relief was Leon.
I’ve watched enough bad movies to know that there’s definitely a good kind of Bad. And even ‘Bad’ movies can be entertaining, even if it’s not entirely on purpose.
I was definitely entertained by Welcome to Raccoon City. I mean, hey, I’ve been more bored watching ‘better’ movies. And, in a way, Welcome to Raccoon City is the most faithful Resident Evil adaptation we’ve had yet – because it absolutely nails the goofiness of the early games in the series.
And, plus, although I don’t think it meets enough criteria to legally count as CanCon, but it was filmed in Sudbury and features several Canadian actors.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is available for digital rental and purchase on various services and is currently streaming on Paramount+.
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