Resident Evil Movie’s Everyman Spirit Points Fans to Three Survival Horror Classics

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie is now streaming, and it’s great. The Barbarian and Weapons director’s film — widely celebrated as the highest-rated video game adaptation to-date — made a deliberate creative choice not to adapt any existing game. Instead, Cregger reconstructed the essence of the player experience on screen, layering resource management and puzzle-solving into a cinematic narrative. As viewers recapture the tension and dread of Cregger’s Resident Evil, three titles offer a natural way to extend that experience into interactive form.

While the film earned its reputation for loving nods to the survival horror genre as a whole, its true legacy may lie in how it reframed the player’s role. By casting an ordinary, untrained protagonist in the lead, Cregger tapped into a tradition of horror games where survival depends on wits rather than firepower. For those itching to play another survival horror game after the film, a trio of titles captures that same vulnerability and suspense.

Alien: Isolation

Where the movie’s claustrophobic tension comes from cramped rooms and tight vents, Alien: Isolation delivers the same dread through stealth and limited ammunition. Available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360, the game follows Amanda Ripley, daughter of iconic Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley, as she investigates the disappearance of her mother on a neglected space station. Surprisingly, an alien is there.

Amanda is functionally helpless against the creature: she cannot see it, and it stalks her relentlessly. Players must rely on stealth and Amanda’s limited ammunition to mount quick escapes. Like Bryan in the film, Amanda traverses cramped rooms and tight vents while pursued by an unkillable monster. In both cases, the threat of another scare behind every door and around every corner keeps players on the edge of their seats for hours. Now is a particularly good time to pick up Alien: Isolation, as its highly anticipated sequel finally received a trailer at Summer Games Fest earlier this year.

Outlast

Unlike previous Resident Evil movies, Cregger’s film does not follow an existing series protagonist. Highly trained zombie killers like Leon, Jill, and Chris are nowhere to be found. Instead, audiences meet Bryan, a medical courier woefully unprepared for a Resident Evil-style outbreak. “I’d rather watch a movie starring a schlub who’s, like, out of shape and has never fired a gun before,” Cregger told Polygon’s Matt Patches. That is exactly the film he made.

Bryan is not a cop, a soldier, or a special agent. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and that is part of what makes the film so frightening — he has no special tricks to turn the tables on hordes of infected monsters. He shares that quality with Outlast protagonist Miles Upsher. Outlast, a first-person survival horror game from Canadian studio Red Barrels, follows Miles as he investigates a derelict psychiatric hospital in Colorado filled with violent inmates who freely roam the asylum’s halls. Viewers who found Bryan’s lack of monster-fighting experience compelling are bound to enjoy Outlast, which puts Miles in an even worse spot: he starts unarmed and stays that way for the whole game. When under attack, his only options are to run or hide. Now is also a fantastic time to get into Outlast, as a film adaptation is in the works, with Barbarian and Weapons producer Roy Lee attached to produce.

“I’d rather watch a movie starring a schlub who’s, like, out of shape and has never fired a gun before.”

Zach Cregger, director of Resident Evil

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

For those who want to return to the source, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard remains the most direct link to the film’s DNA. Available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One, the game brought the series back to its survival horror roots by taking away all the advantages players had come to expect, like an arsenal of firearms and advanced technical gear. Action heroes like Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine were gone, replaced by an ordinary systems engineer named Ethan Winters.

While Resident Evil 7 was not the first time the series featured a civilian protagonist — Resident Evil 2’s Claire Redfield, though far more competent than someone like Bryan, is still technically a civilian — it went to great lengths to emphasize Ethan’s lack of experience. Ethan starts the game fully unarmed; his primary means of defense is to cower with his arms above his head. Resident Evil 7 is easily the scariest Resident Evil game. As Ethan searches a decrepit estate for his missing wife, the deeply disturbed Baker family ruthlessly chases after him. Like Bryan, Ethan has to find and teach himself how to use a variety of weapons, though he never seems to get the upper hand.

Resident Evil 7 was a major inspiration for the film — Cregger himself said he drew from Ethan’s status as an everyman. For the most part, Resident Evil 7 is also a self-contained story, so people whose first introduction to Resident Evil was the new movie should have no trouble jumping in.

Looking Ahead

For fans of Cregger’s Resident Evil, the path forward is clear: whether through the relentless tension of Alien: Isolation, the first-person terror of Outlast, or the return to survival horror roots in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, each title offers a different flavor of the fear the film captured so effectively. With a sequel to Alien: Isolation on the horizon and an Outlast film adaptation in development, the survival horror genre shows no signs of slowing down. For now, the best way to honor the movie’s everyman spirit is to strap on, manage resources, and hope the monster doesn’t find you.