Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil film is on track to become the highest-grossing film in the franchise even when adjusted for inflation. So far it’s earned around $320 million in the global box office, but it has a few more weeks left in theaters to surpass Final Chapter‘s inflation-adjusted $430 million.
And the perk of its long theatrical run is that Kojima still had a chance to see it despite not being interested in checking it out at first. And he absolutely loved it, because if you know Kojima’s tendencies on social media, you’ll know he only writes paragraphs about the stuff he likes. If he tells you that he just saw your movie, chances are that he didn’t enjoy it very much.
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Of Resident Evil, Kojima said that “right from the opening, it hits you with music reminiscent of The Thing. From there, it’s a relentless barrage of classic horror techniques, terrifying situations, and jump scares that never lets up until the very end.”
He echoes some of our own sentiments, saying it’s more of an adaptation of the player rather than the game, which is exactly how we felt in our review. “This isn’t a film adaptation of “Resident Evil.” It’s a film about the experience of playing Resident Evil with a controller in hand,” he said.
Kojima then reminisced on a time, 30 years ago, when he first tried the original Resident Evil game, saying the movie reminded him of his experience way back when. “I was just like Bryan in this movie. I kept getting game over after game over, shouting “F***!” over and over again. lol,” Kojima wrote.
Hideo Kojima is a huge movie buff and, well, it sometimes feels like his games were meant to be live-action blockbusters rather than video games, despite their evident innovations. To see him loving a video game adaptation says a lot about Cregger’s achievement, and while it’s not the perfect movie by any means, it’s definitely up there with some of the greatest horror flicks of our generation.
It’s brutal, it’s intense, fast-paced, and unrelenting, and that’s exactly how an RE film should feel. I just hope the next one includes just a little bit more of the source material, rather than just brushing it off.
