Netflix’s New Resident Evil

Netflix’s Resident Evil may cause déjà vu, confusion, and the urge to pick up a controller. Capcom has spent decades trying to figure out how to create live-action Resident Evil adaptations with wide appeal outside of the video games’ core fanbase, much like how the fictional Umbrella Corporation struggled for years to comprehend the mutagenic T-virus. With its cunning and frightening surprises, Netflix’s new Resident Evil series from Supernatural writer Andrew Dabb has the makings of a breakout success. Similar to the T-virus, the new series has an apocalyptic plot that combines various elements of Resident Evil’s past while imagining a new future for some of the franchise’s most recognizable characters.

In Netflix’s Resident Evil, Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick), one of Umbrella’s top executives, is portrayed as a slightly altered but still very recognizable version of himself. He has been in charge of overseeing the development of the company’s most recent pharmaceutical breakthrough, a drug called “Joy.” Joy, a new multipurpose drug from Umbrella, has the potential to cure depression and anxiety worldwide while earning the company billions of dollars in the process. Joy can cause some complications, though, as is often the case with Umbrella’s miraculous treatments derived from the T-virus, which is why this iteration of Wesker — a family man — wants to keep it off the market.

As Resident Evil, which is actually set in the future in 2022, begins, Wesker emerges as something of an unexpected hero due to his shaky moral compass. Resident Evil gradually reveals that it’s actually a story about Weskers’ fraternal twin daughters, two characters who were created for the new show, as the show jumps back and forth in time between 2022 and its present day in 2036.

Resident Evil feels most true to form when it follows adult Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska) on her fully immersive quest to understand the T-virus after the pathogen escapes, but in 2022, the show shines when it focuses on younger iterations of Jade (Tamara Smart) and her sister Billie (Adeline Rudolph). The show’s first hints about its connections to the larger Resident Evil franchise and how, despite how different things initially appear, appearances can be deceiving when the Umbrella Corporation is involved are revealed through the teenage girls’ tense relationship with their father.

Given the number of Resident Evil adaptations that have come out in recent years, the Netflix show’s approach to playing fast and loose with the series’ lore works to keep things feeling somewhat fresh, up to a point. However, rather than putting Albert and the Wesker sisters at the center of a properly compelling mystery spanning multiple timelines, Resident Evil opts for a predictable plot that ultimately suffers from being such a late entry in the modern-day zombie craze.

Resident Evil has remained relevant in part because Capcom hasn’t been afraid to drastically change the experience, such as the terrifying shift to a first-person perspective in Resident Evil 7. The same cannot be said for the numerous film and television adaptations, and Netflix’s Resident Evil is no exception. It’s almost as if you’re watching a streamer play one of the franchise’s more forgettable entries — and then realize halfway through that their controller has been disconnected the entire time.

That may not be the case if Netflix decides to bring Resident Evil back for more seasons and go for even more of the big, ridiculous, disgusting ideas that have kept other parts of the franchise fresh recently.