popcorn & psychological damage: A Spoiler-Free Resident Evil (2026) Review

Hello cuties! First off, I'm so thankful there are over 30+ of y'all here! 🥹💕

My first post for October is movie review. I started Spooky Season off with a bang: I went to see Resident Evil in theaters!

Me watching Resident Evil (2026)

After about an hour and 30 minutes, the credits started to roll. I turned to my boyfriend and said, “That was a really good movie. It was definitely the best Resident Evil movie I've ever seen. I hated every moment of it.”

Let me explain!

Listen—the movie is good. Really good. With a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, I'd say the rest of the world thought it was pretty fantastic too. But I went into the movie pretty blind and did not realize I was in for 90 minutes of pure anxiety and terror.

Slight backstory: I'm familiar with the Resident Evil franchise, mostly through the internet, but especially through my boyfriend. He's a big fan of the games, with Resident Evil 4 being his favorite. (In fact, he's playing the remake as I type this lol.)

When we first started dating, he introduced me to the Resident Evil film series starring Milla Jovovich. Those movies were...interesting, to say the least lol. We had a good time watching them, even if they were a little nonsensical. I've also watched him play Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4, and he's explained a lot of the lore to me over the years.

So when he asked if I wanted to see the new Resident Evil movie for our weekly date night, I said sure! I'd been hearing really good things about it, and the trailer looked enticing. So we went to our local theater, got some popcorn and drinks, and sat down to see what the hell was going on in Raccoon City now. About 20 minutes in, I realized I was in trouble.

I'm kind of a weird horror fan. I love the genre, and a lot of my favorite media is horror or horror-adjacent, but I definitely have my limits.

I love a good psychological or supernatural horror story, but I hate gore, body horror, and grotesque-type stuff. Not because I think it's bad—it just makes me uncomfortable. Like, physically uncomfortable. I'll cringe, squirm, and maybe even get a little nauseous.

And I hate jump scares. Guess what Resident Evil was full of?

I spent a good portion of the movie clenching my armrest, anticipating the next scare or mentally going, “What the FUCK?” every time a new, unfathomable horror creature appeared on screen.

Honestly, I can see why the video game fans loved this film. One of my biggest “complaints” when my boyfriend first introduced me to the games was that they weren't just scary because of the jump scares—they were also so damn gross. There is something about the Resident Evil franchise that manages to combine fear with the most disgusting things imaginable.

Needless to say, my nervous system was not having a good time watching this movie, haha. But despite all of that, I did genuinely enjoy the movie!

I feel like that's a testament to how good it was. A movie that had me questioning every life choice that led me into that theater still had me sitting there afterward thinking, “Wow...that was actually one of the best movies of the year.” It managed to strike this really fun balance between feeling cinematic and video game-esque at the same time. The plot, cinematography, pacing, and even the protagonist all felt like they could have been pulled straight out of a RE game, but they were translated into a movie in a way that actually worked. It seems like the filmmakers understood what makes the games so fun without making the movie completely dependent on the audience knowing every little detail. I'm sure there were a million Easter eggs and references that went completely over my head, but I never felt like I was missing something important because I hadn't played every game or memorized the lore. The story still stood on its own, which I think is really important for a movie based on an established franchise.

Me during the entire farmhouse sequence

That made it the perfect movie to kick off Spooky Season. It had creepy atmosphere, monsters, jump scares, mystery, gore (unfortunately for me lol), and just enough campy video-game energy to make the whole experience feel like a fun October night at the movies. Was I stressed? Absolutely. Did my soul leave my body a few times? Definitely. But isn't that kind of the point of Spooky Season? 

All I know is: if anyone ever mentions the words "Racoon City" to me, I'm running in the other direction. 

TTYL!

- Eryn