Double Feature W/ Scott Schirmer #5

RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

Writer/director Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) lends his strong directorial efforts and a healthy sense of humor to the Resident Evil film franchise, based on a popular series of action/horror video games. Milla Jovovich starred in a slew of these films between 2002 and 2016. I’ve seen none of these movies and I’ve never played the video game either. So my opinion of this new 2026 reboot is one that takes the film on its own merits. Is it faithful to the video games or past movies? I couldn’t tell you. To me, it’s just another horror movie.

The film hits the ground running, with Austin Abrams (terrific in Weapons) playing a courier who drives transplant organs between hospitals. On one snowy night, en route with a life-saving delivery, a woman runs out of the woods and in front of his car. Abrams soon realizes she’s not a normal human being — she’s infected with violent disease that mutates her body at will. She chases him to a farmhouse, where Abrams encounters another person and a dog who are both infected — signaling a terrifying, mysterious outbreak of some kind.

Resident Evil feels very much like a video game as it flits from one suspenseful survival sequence to the next, which will no doubt make it appealing to attention-deficit youngsters more than old fogies like me who crave story and substance. Abrams reacts to everything with a darkly comedic incredulity that makes the experience more engrossing than procedural.

But there’s only a scant over-arching narrative. Abrams’ character learns his delivery package is a vital ingredient to a cure some scientists are working on in a hospital high-rise. He essentially has to make the delivery to save the world — and, after he’s bitten by one of these infected monsters, he’s trying to save himself, too.

I don’t know if die hard horror fans will take a shine to this movie or not. If you’ve seen many zombie or outbreak movies, you’ve pretty much already seen this one. But if all you’re looking for is ‘another one’, then this will suffice. The gore and horror manifests in ways that owe everything to John Carpenter and Rob Bottin’s work on The Thing, but it’s never as good as The Thing. The action gets repetitious and about half-way through the movie, I was craving some deeper, more sophisticated storytelling. Unfortunately, that’s just not what this movie was made for.

There are, however, two things that pull Resident Evil from the ‘bad movie’ zone and into the mediocre zone for me. One: Cregger’s direction is tight. He builds tension and suspense throughout, so much so that the film actually becomes fatiguing. And two: Austin Abrams gives a remarkably strong performance. He’s a very charismatic, likable guy whose self-deprecating humor quickly endears him to the audience. He makes this one-note adventure much more entertaining than it would have been otherwise.

With Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, and Kali Reis.

OBSESSION (2026)

After buying a ‘One Wish Willow’ novelty item that grants a wish, a young man named Bear (Michael Johnston) is shocked to discover his wish came true: the apple of his eye, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), now loves him more than anyone else in the whole world. But her love turns out to be a dangerous, suffocating love that transforms the once sweet-natured young woman into an obsessive, terrifying monster. She watches him sleep and waits by the door for him to come home from work. Eventually, she becomes insane with paranoia whenever Bear is out of her sight. And anyone she perceives to be vying for his affection does so at mortal peril. As her supernatural devotion turns his life into a nightmare and begets a body count, Bear learns the only way to undo the wish and restore Nikki to her former self is as grim as the prospects of being her love-slave forever.

Obsession features strong performances from Johnston and Navarrette, but the screenplay only develops their characters through the first act. Navarrette is particularly fearless as Nikki, a woman who is essentially demonically possessed. The film calls on her to deliver a repetitious series of histrionics. Nikki invariably gets quiet and spooky, and then suddenly does a big, loud, flashy thing every ten minutes — whether it’s pissing her pants, screaming like a banshee, or popping up out of nowhere for the kill. The acting is compelling enough to win some awards, even if the character experiences no growth or evolution.

Once the fateful wish is granted, the remainder of the film’s run time falls into a predictable pattern of jump scares and indulgent ‘shock moments’ designed to keep younger generations from checking their phones. Writer/director Curry Barker, a YouTube creator hitting it big with Obsession‘s record-breaking box office performance, relies too much on painfully loud sound effects and annoyingly dark cinematography. The first half-hour does a good job setting up sympathetic Gen Z characters, but any message or meaning gets sidelined once Barker commits to the rinse-and-repeat shock cycle.

Descents into Hell can be devilishly good fun, but Obsession felt hollow and performative to me, and the concept feels uninspired — isn’t there a version of this story in every sci-fi or horror anthology series ever created? There’s certainly a place in our cinematic diets for shock-exploitation flicks like this, but for me, Obsession just doesn’t live up to its astounding box office reputation and phenomenal word-of-mouth.

With Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter.

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Scott Schirmer is an independent filmmaker and reviewer. His films include the cult classics FOUND, HEADLESS, HARVEST LAKE, PLANK FACE, THE BAD MAN, and GUSH. His daily reviews can be discovered at www.scottsmoviereviews.com.