Every live-action Resident Evil sat under 40 percent on Rotten Tomatoes - Zach Cregger's reboot opened at 98
Defying what fans expected, the Resident Evil reboot is earning unusually strong critical response on Rotten Tomatoes, a milestone that sets it apart from the franchise’s earlier films.
Here we are in 2026, and would you believe it? The Resident Evil reboot has just managed to do something none of its cinematic predecessors could pull off. This new film adaptation is riding unusually high on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is shaking up a franchise that's never really been a darling with the critics.
Resident Evil (2026) arrives with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 98% — the best any Resident Evil film has managed since the franchise lurched onto the big screen.
A proper critical breakthrough
So, a bit of context: up till now, every single live-action Resident Evil film has hovered somewhere below 40% on the Tomatometer. The much-loved/derided Paul W.S. Anderson era — all six films with Milla Jovovich front and centre — never got past 37%, with 'The Final Chapter' dragging in at that number specifically. Then in 2021, 'Welcome to Raccoon City' came along, and that one scraped the bottom with a 30% rating. It was beginning to look like critics had made up their collective minds about what this series could deliver.
But now, along comes director Zach Cregger (yes, the bloke behind 'Barbarian'), and the verdict could not be more different. As of release, his new R-rated run at the material is sitting pretty at a jaw-dropping 98% approval.
What did they change?
Cregger's approach is to dial back on the bombast, leaving behind over-the-top action for something much closer to the spirit of the original Capcom games. Instead of rolling out the old Resident Evil roster — no Leon, no Jill, none of the video game regulars — the focus is on a fresh central character. Austin Abrams leads as a medical courier, dropped straight into outbreak hell without warning. As things spiral out of control in the infected zone, he's scrambling for supplies, rationing ammo with real survival-horror sting, and constantly up against bigger, nastier monsters.
If you’re after cast specifics: alongside Abrams, you’ll spot Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry. The film's brutal, low-supplies tension seems much more reminiscent of the very first Resident Evil game than anything with a blockbuster pulse. Critics seem especially taken with its commitment to actual horror — proper suspense, dark atmosphere, and some genuinely nasty creature effects, rather than another round of overblown set pieces.
The 2026 Resident Evil reboot dropped into cinemas at just 97 minutes, keeping the pacing sharp and the audience on edge throughout.
So if you’d given up hope that a Resident Evil movie could win over the critics, apparently 2026 is full of surprises. Whether the fans who’ve grown up on the old films will agree — that’s another story altogether.