Sep 18, 2026 · 22 min
Resident Evil reboot trades elevated horror for chaotic fun
Resident Evil and What's Making Us Happy
The panel weighs whether the reboot’s game-like horror comedy works better when it embraces entertainment over prestige-horror seriousness.
- 1Zack Cregger’s reboot moves quickly between inventive horror, comedy, and video-game-inspired spectacle.
- 2Austin Abrams gives the film a relatable human center through an exasperated everyman performance.
- 3The recommendations pair horror comic Fixation with Shaun the Sheep and Carly Rae Jepsen’s expansive Day and Night.
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The panel identifies Austin Abrams’s exasperated everyman as the relatable human center inside the reboot’s horror-comedy chaos.
The brief
Roxana Haddadi, Jordan Morris, and Stephen Thompson discuss Zack Cregger’s Resident Evil reboot, which swaps the earlier films’ approach for a faster, more inventive horror-comedy.
The panel likes the movie’s video-game energy, visual invention, and comic timing, even as the finale becomes somewhat goofy and the film favors fun over elevated-horror pretensions.
Austin Abrams supplies the human center as an exasperated everyman dealing with gig-economy frustration, giving the chaos a relatable point of view.
The recommendations move from Fixation, a horror comic about super fans, to Shaun the Sheep’s Halloween special as a lighthearted chaser.
Stephen Thompson closes the happy-making segment with Carly Rae Jepsen’s 24-song Day and Night, praising its day-and-night structure and consistently strong pop songwriting.