Director Zach Cregger Names 3 Movies To Watch After Resident Evil
Zach Cregger has done what was thought to be impossible: made a very good Resident Evil movie.
But if you’ve already enjoyed his latest film, what should you watch next? Well, speaking to JustWatch, Cregger (with some input from lead actor Austin Abrams) has some suggestions.
Thanks to a ludicrously entertaining performance from Abrams and some superb flair behind the camera from Cregger, 2026's Resident Evil is a living, breathing video game on the big screen, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be dying to rewatch the film as soon as possible. In the meantime, though, here are three films Cregger recommends you watch after his third feature if you’re keen to stick to a similar vibe.
While Cregger’s Resident Evil is as creepy and jump-scare-inducing as you’d expect, it’s also surprisingly funny. This aligns it perfectly with Sam Raimi’s cult classic, Evil Dead II, which is just as concerned with demons and spooky stuff as it is with humorously riffing on the original.
Bruce Campbell is, as always, electric in the lead role, delivering frantic energy and mastering the art of slapstick-horror as Abrams does in Resident Evil. If you like your horror a little meta, very playful, and delightfully gory, Evil Dead II and Resident Evil are both right in the sweet spot of that particular Venn diagram. In Cregger's own words, "I think [Resident Evil] has some of that energy."
Few films in the 21st century have so effectively nailed the simple concept of taking the audience on a relentless thrill ride from one place to another as Mad Max: Fury Road.
The George Miller legacy sequel, at its core, is about one man driving really fast in one direction, then going back on himself equally as fast. But thanks to some of the best visuals ever in an action movie, and some killer battle choreography, it works, and then some. "It's just kind of one extended adrenalised sequence," Cregger explains. Abrams agrees: "The point A to point B aspect of it."
That same dynamism and blistering energy is present in the director and actor's Resident Evil, a film that never lets up and never allows the viewer to relax (in a good way). As we watch Fury Road's Max and Resident Evil's Bryan’s missions play out, we are constantly on edge, waiting for the next thing to go wrong, and it’s an absolute riot.
There is one particular sequence in 2026's Resident Evil where a bunch of infected zombies leap off the top of buildings and try to land on poor Bryan as he sprints through Raccoon City. While it’s a totally different scenario, there are definitely similarities between it and the moment when Lance Corporal Will Schofield (George MacKay) dashes across the battlefield in 1917 as gunfire rains down on him.
Echoing Abrams' description of Mad Max: Fury Road, Cregger says of Sam Mendes' WWI film: "I feel like 1917 has a little bit of the [Resident Evil] DNA in that the movie just follows a person from point A to point B, and I think that's pretty cool."
In the grand scheme of things, Bryan and Schofield are pretty much on the same journey. The former has a vitally important object he has to get from one place to another, while the latter has a key piece of information to deliver; both can save countless lives if they succeed. They’re characters we root for, but only one achieves what he sets out to do and gives us a happy ending.
