If you believe the social media conversation about Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, you would say the movie was an affront to the video game series and a total letdown. You would, of course, be hearing that from people who have not seen the movie. Critics, however, have, and now their reviews have produced a record Rotten Tomatoes score for the franchise. Not that it’s a terribly high bar. But if this score holds, Resident Evil may be the highest-scored horror movie of the year, and potentially one of the highest-scored wide-releases of 2026 as well.

Resident Evil has a stunning 98% Rotten Tomatoes score with over four dozen critic reviews in. That is the highest-scored Resident Evil movie by a metric mile, as no past film has gotten above a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. The cancelled Resident Evil Netflix series scored the “best” with a 54% rating. Fans, however, absolutely hated it, giving it a 26% score.

But for RE movies? Here’s how the list breaks down, and it’s not remotely close. You can’t even see these other movies from way up here.

  • Resident Evil (2026) - 98% critic score
  • Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) – 37% critic score
  • Resident Evil (2002) – 36% critic score
  • Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) – 30% critic score
  • Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) – 28% critic score
  • Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) – 24% critic score
  • Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) – 24% critic score
  • Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) – 18% critic score

Four were directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and six starred Milla Jovovich as Alice. We moved past that with the (not good) Raccoon City a few years ago, meant to be a sort of reboot. Cregger’s Resident Evil, however, is a departure from all of these. There has been relentless anger about the film from some Resident Evil fans, given its concept of using no existing game characters and no game storylines, rather telling the story of one man, Austin Abrams, trying to transport a valuable from A to B while dealing with the mutant horde of RE-universe zombies.

The anger is likely going to turn out to be just noise. The film is supposed to be excellent, according to these reviews, and early box office projections see the R-rated film potentially earning $40 million or more in its opening weekend, which would be the biggest Resident Evil opening ever.

Cregger is behind new-era horror classics like Barbarian (92% score) and Weapons (93% score). Resident Evil has followed suit. It appears that due to all the pre-release backlash, Cregger has said he’s not doing a franchise film like this again. And that’s a shame.

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