3 Games You Have to Play if You Loved the New Resident Evil Movie

Unlike previous Resident Evil movies, Resident Evil (2026) doesn’t follow an existing series protagonist. Highly trained zombie killers like Leon, Jill, and Chris are nowhere to be found in Cregger’s film. Instead, Cregger introduced audiences to 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’s exactly the movie Cregger made. Byran is not a cop, a soldier, or a special agent. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. That’s part of what makes the film so scary — Bryan has no special tricks that could turn the table 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. The hospital is full of “variants,” violent inmates who freely roam the asylum’s halls.

Viewers who found Bryan’s lack of monster-fighting experience particularly compelling are bound to enjoy Outlast. Outlast puts Miles in an even worse spot than Bryan: Miles starts unarmed and stays that way for the whole game. When under attack, Miles’ only options are to run or hide. Now is also a fantastic time to get into Outlast — a film adaptation is in the works, with Barbarian and Weapons producer Roy Lee attached to produce.

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Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Where to Play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One

If you liked Resident Evil (2026), and you haven’t played Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, drop everything and play it now. Resident Evil 7 brought the series back to its survival horror roots. It did so 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 wasn’t 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.