The long-running "Resident Evil" film franchise gets an "Extreme Makeover"-style overhaul with writer-director Zach Cregger's "Resident Evil," a pure funhouse ride of a horror-thriller, which takes the idea of the video game and constructs an entirely new world around it.

The original film series (six entries, running from 2002-2016, not counting the 2021 reboot "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City") was grimly violent and starred Milla Jovovich as butt-kicking, zombie-blasting hero Alice.

No such character appears in Cregger's take on the material, which stars Austin Abrams ("Weapons") as Bryan, a bumbling medical courier learning as he goes about the zombie invasion he's suddenly thrust into. With every turn of a corner, he's confronted with some new wrinkle in his unfolding story, and it's on him to figure out the best way forward.

The movie starts as Bryan is tasked with a high priority medical delivery to a hospital across town, which he gladly accepts. Weather conditions aren't great, but he needs the money, and we learn through phone conversations with his girlfriend that she has a baby on the way and they're deciding whether or not to move forward with the pregnancy.

Bryan is in no way ready for a child to enter his life; he's a slacker-type who looks like he exists on a diet of fast food and video games. But he's trying to do the right thing, or at least what he thinks the right thing would sound like. "Your body, your choice," he tells his girlfriend on the phone, feeling heroic for doing so.

On his way to his delivery, he hits a stranger with his car. When he goes to check on the victim, he finds she's acting very erratic, awake and covered in blood but not saying a word. He loads her in his car and proceeds to the hospital. Again, he's trying to do the right thing.

He's soon pulled over by a cop who, after some back and forth, agrees to escort him and the crash victim to get help. But when the cop car suddenly veers off the road and flips his car in the snow, Bryan is forced to fend for himself, which leads him into a nearby farmhouse.

There's an episodic nature to the way "Resident Evil" unfolds, like levels in a video game. Bryan needs to find his way out of every jam he gets himself into, before another challenge immediately presents itself.

In that way, the propulsive "Resident Evil" is very much a video game, and Cregger ("Weapons," "Barbarian") frames his characters like figures in a video game world. At one point Bryan is picked up by two strangers (played by Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser) who are headed to the same place he is, and the way they address Bryan in the frame is very much the way nonplayable characters address players in a video game. The movie has a lived-in understanding of first person video game aesthetics.

Meanwhile, Cregger keeps the humor and excitement levels at a high. "Resident Evil" very much plays like a comedy, driven by Abrams' performance as an average dude in way over his head. "I suck at guns!" he bellows, as he's increasingly forced to shoot tentacle-spouting supernatural creatures who are trying to kill him.

He's constantly cursing, muttering swear words out of frustration with the situation, like an annoyed dad who just stubbed his toe in the dark. When he screams, it comes out as a high-pitched squeal, not a manly, tough guy growl. At one point he complains about his socks being wet — something not a lot of movie characters might do, but something any normal person who was trudging through snow while running for their life would do.

Abrams' shtick was exhausting in 2024's "Wolfs," where he was third banana to George Clooney and Brad Pitt's slick-talking hit men, but Cregger found the perfect vehicle for his scrappy, disheveled charm in "Weapons," and "Resident Evil" is another expert use of him. With "Whalefall" on the way, Abrams is officially about to become a very big deal.

Cregger already is a big deal, and his wholesale reinvention of "Resident Evil" into a rollicking nightmare comic adventure is proof that with the right filmmaker and the right vision, any piece of IP can refreshed and turned on its ear. The zombie franchise was looking dead, but "Resident Evil" is newly alive in all the right ways.

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'RESIDENT EVIL'

Grade: B+

MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout)

Running time: 1:30 minutes

How to watch: In theaters Sept. 18

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