Follow
Link copied to clipboard
Austin Manchester is a writer and editor living in New York City. At Polygon, he covers gaming and entertainment news, reviews new video games, interviews behind-the-scenes talent, and more. He enjoys discovering hidden gems and sharing them with Polygon's audience. Previously, he was the gaming editor for AIPT Comics and has written for other outlets like XDA, How-To Geek, and The List.
He enjoys soulslikes, character-driven RPGs, and third-person shooters plucked straight out of the Xbox 360 era. He also likes to flex his non-video game nerdy knowledge sometimes, whether that's explaining who's who in the new Wolverine game or recommending a comic book series about a sentient sword.
People like seeing great movies in theaters — who knew?
Sign in to your Polygon.com account
From Resident Evil Requiem to Resident Evil remakes landing on Nintendo Switch 2 this month, it's been a good year to be a fan of Capcom's classic horror series. The franchise also saw its latest film reboot hit the big screen, and, in a first for the franchise, director Zach Cregger's Resident Evil is an honest-to-goodness great movie.
Resident Evil had a strong opening weekend last month with $60 million at the domestic box office, the best opening weekend for any Resident Evil movie. Now that it's opened in China, Japan, and other territories, Resident Evil has set new box office records. With a $62.7 million worldwide weekend gross, Resident Evil now sits at $320.2 million total, according to Deadline.
That haul makes it the highest-grossing movie in franchise history, ahead of 2016's Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ($314.1 million worldwide). It's also Cregger's highest-grossing film, topping Weapons, which grossed $270 million worldwide last year. Resident Evil has only been in theaters for four weekends now, and with spooky season ramping up, don't be surprised if the horror movie's worldwide haul continues to grow in the weeks to come.
Resident Evil is one of the best-reviewed movies of the year
Resident Evil has ridden a wave of positive reviews on its way to hitting those box office milestones. It debuted to a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, easily making it the highest-rated video game movie around.
Polygon's Jake Kleinman called Resident Evil a "near-perfect horror movie" in his positive review about how well Resident Evil translates the experience of playing a Resident Evil game. "Cregger takes his love for both the franchise and the genre and channels them into something we've never really seen before. Resident Evil is funny, scary, gross, and beautiful. Above all else, it captures the fight-or-flight experience of actually playing a Resident Evil game," he said.
While a sequel hasn't been greenlit, Cregger is thinking about where it could go next. "I've already got other ideas of what could happen. But my next movie is already kind of in place here, and it's not a Resident Evil movie — I'm gonna go make something else. But on the other side of that, who knows? Who can say? Anything could happen," he told Polygon last month.