About Resident Evil
So you’ve watched Alice punch a zombie dog in slow motion for the eighth time and now you need more. Which is completely understandable.
The Resident Evil franchise is a glorious trash fire of video game logic, undead hordes, Milla Jovovich doing backflips in a red dress — and somehow it ran for six films. If you’ve burned through the whole Resident Evil saga and you’re sitting there at 2 a.m. with a bucket of popcorn and a concerning tolerance for gore – congrats! You’ve come to the right place.
Here are 15 movies that scratch that same itch of biological catastrophe, morally bankrupt corporations, and protagonists who are way too hot to be fighting this many undead monsters.
1. 28 Days Later (2002)
Danny Boyle decided that slow, shambling zombies were too polite and gave us the Rage virus — a pathogen that turns people into sprinting, screaming nightmare fuel within seconds. 28 Days Later follows Cillian Murphy, who wakes up from a coma to find London completely empty, which sounds peaceful until it absolutely isn’t. Shot on grainy digital video, 28 Days Later looks like found footage from the zombie apocalypse.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The abandoned London opening, where the silence is somehow more terrifying than anything with teeth.
- The highway ambush, which proves that even in the apocalypse, a traffic jam will ruin your day.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: 28 Days Later is basically the T-Virus but British and with worse weather. The “corporation did this” energy is strong in this movie, and the infected move with the same chaotic menace as the Crimson Heads. Except they’re faster. Much, much faster. You better be good at cardio!
2. Train to Busan (2016)
A Korean action-horror masterpiece that made grown adults cry on public transportation worldwide. Train to Busan follows a workaholic father and his daughter as they board a train to Busan while a zombie outbreak erupts across South Korea. What follows is 118 minutes of pure, claustrophobic panic, class warfare, and the most devastating use of a baseball bat in movie history.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The tunnel sequence, where absolute darkness and absolute dread combine into something unforgettable.
- The finale, which will hollow you out emotionally and leave nothing behind.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Train to Busan is filled with zombies, desperate survivors, and the creeping realisation that the real monsters are the humans who won’t open the train car door. Alice wouldn’t have just opened the door. She would’ve kicked that bastard wide open.
3. I Am Legend (2007)
Will Smith plays the last man in New York City — or so he thinks — spending his days working on a cure for a virus that’s turned the population into pale, shrieking cave creatures who think they’re experts at jump scares. I Am Legend is one-third survival horror, one-third scientific procedural, and one-third Will Smith talking to mannequins and his dog, which is way sadder than it sounds.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The darkened video store, where the mannequins have been rearranged and Smith’s character realises, that he’s been studied. It’s haunting and
- The dog scene. You know the dog scene. We don’t talk about the dog scene.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: It’s set in a viral post-apocalypse, featuring a lone survivor with combat skills, and mutated monsters whose shrieks were recorded by Mr Bungle’s Mike Patton. It’s basically Raccoon City if Raccoon City were Manhattan and the Umbrella Corporation had better PR.
4. World War Z (2013)
Brad Pitt travels the globe looking extremely concerned while a zombie pandemic disassembles civilization at remarkable speed. In a sentence: the zombies in World War Z are absolutely insane. They move in swarms, forming literal zombie pyramids to scale walls, which is either terrifying or impressive (depending on your perspective). The third act pivots hard into a WHO research facility and becomes a tense little thriller nobody asked for but everyone deserved.
My Favourite Scenes:
- Jerusalem’s wall breach, where the zombie swarm operates like a single, hideous organism.
- The WHO corridor sequence, a slow-burn stealth section that feels ripped straight from a survival horror game.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: World War Z features global outbreak, shadowy organisations, and a protagonist who’s basically doing side quests across the apocalypse. If you ever wanted Resident Evil to have a bigger budget, horrible CGI and fewer laser grids, then here you go.
5. Doom (2005)
Look. I know. Doom is far from being a good movie. But neither is most of what you’ve been watching. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Doom follows a team of space marines who are sent to a research facility on Mars where experiments have gone predictably sideways. Unfortunately, there’s no demons like in the game. But, it does have a first-person shooter sequence that feels just as stupid as it sounds.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The FPS sequence, which commits to the bit harder than it should have. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine.
- Karl Urban’s character arc, which goes from “protagonist” to “uh-oh” with surgical efficiency.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: It’s basically the same plot — corporation, bioweapon, monsters, marines, bad decisions. It even has a soundtrack that’s almost as good – by Clint Mansell – who’s done soundtracks like Peacemaker, Requiem for a Dream, Doom Patrol and many others.
If you loved the military squad dynamics of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, then this is for you. You could call it: its ugly, dim-witted sibling.
6. The Crazies (2010)
A toxic bioweapon contaminates a small Iowa town’s water supply, turning residents into methodical, emotionless killers with unsettlingly good organizational skills. Unlike your standard zombie fare, the infected in The Crazies have a plan, which is absolutely terrifying. Timothy Olyphant gets his cardio up in this movie and the government is far from helpful in dealing with this threat.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The car wash sequence, which is a masterclass in using a mundane (and usually friendly) setting to generate pure dread.
- The pitchfork scene in the high school bleachers, which ruined sports for an entire generation of viewers.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: The whole movie is a government-sponsored bioweapon disaster with quarantine zones and authorities who respond to the outbreak by making it infinitely worse. Umbrella Corporation would’ve felt right at home in this place.
7. Extinction (2018)
This Netflix sci-fi thriller starts with a father’s recurring nightmares about an alien invasion which turns out to be — well, not exactly what you’d expect. Extinction has a twist that genuinely recontextualizes everything, which is either clever storytelling or a bait-and-switch depending on how charitable you’re feeling. There’s decent action, solid creature design, and a third act that earns its paycheque.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The apartment siege that opens the film is claustrophobic and relentless.
- The reveal sequence, which reframes the entire movie’s morality, is absolutely harrowing and makes you think – long and hard – about which side you’re really on.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: There’s underground survivors, surface-dwelling monsters, and a conspiracy at the centre of everything. It has that same “wait, who are the real villains here?” energy that Resident Evil thrives on.
8. Underworld (2003)
Vampires versus werewolves in a gothic European city, and Kate Beckinsale in the tightest latex catsuit known to man. Underworld follows a centuries-old war that’s being manipulated by powerful factions in the Werewolf and Vampire Clans – for reasons that takes the entire length of the franchise to fully explain. It’s stylish, gloomy, and it’s basically The Matrix if Trinity was a hot vampire.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The subway ambush opening, which introduces the world’s aesthetic, is nonstop Matrix fuelled Vampire vs Werewolf action.
- The reveal of vampire elder, Viktor, goes to show just how old the Vampire and Werewolf conflict actually is.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: It’s female action lead in impractical clothing dispatching monsters with ruthless efficiency. Underworld is basically the Resident Evil template with elder millennial goth architecture. Proving that Selene and Alice should have a crossover.
9. Cargo (2017)
An Australian post-apocalyptic film where a father, already bitten and on a 48-hour countdown before he turns, must find someone to care for his infant daughter before he becomes a threat to her. It’s devastating, quiet, and uses the zombie genre to say something genuinely human about parenthood, which honestly feels unfair given the genre’s usual priorities.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The river sequence that kicks the film into motion — brutal, quick, and completely earned.
- The final act, which will dismantle you quietly and leave you reeling.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Viral zombie apocalypse with a ticking clock mechanic — it’s basically a survival horror game mechanic translated directly to screen. Emotionally, it’s the opposite of Resident Evil, but the undead aesthetic is right in the wheelhouse.
10. Overlord (2018)
It’s D-Day, there’s Nazi zombies, and it’s produced by J.J. Abrams, so you know the budget showed up. American paratroopers drop behind enemy lines and discover a French village being used for occult biological experiments. It becomes progressively more unhinged in the best possible way, and the monster design in the third act is genuinely excellent nightmare material.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The opening plane sequence, which is twenty minutes of pure chaos before the main plot even starts.
- The basement laboratory reveal, which is complete creature feature horror.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Military unit + secret bioweapon facility + mutated horrors = the Resident Evil formula, but with better period costumes. If Umbrella had operated in 1944, this is exactly what would have happened.
11. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)
Teenagers who survived a deadly maze are now running across a post-apocalyptic wasteland from zombie-adjacent creatures called Cranks while a shadowy organization called WCKD monitors everything. Yes, WCKD. They named their evil corporation WCKD. Respect the commitment.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The city chase sequence, where the Cranks attack in overwhelming numbers through crumbling ruins.
- The WCKD facility infiltration, which delivers competent YA action that punches above its weight class.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Evil corporation, viral apocalypse, young protagonists who are inexplicably good in a fight. It’s Resident Evil filtered through YA tropes, which means less competence and more romantic tension, but the post-apocalyptic infrastructure is still there.
12. Annihilation (2018)
Alex Garland’s beautifully disturbing sci-fi horror film follows a group of scientists entering “The Shimmer,” an expanding anomaly where the laws of biology have been creatively reinterpreted. It’s cerebral, visually stunning, and contains a bear scene that has lived rent-free in the collective unconscious since 2018.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The bear attack, which is so viscerally wrong that it transcends the genre entirely.
- The lighthouse finale, which either makes complete sense or none at all depending on your interpretation.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Mutations, a mysterious organization concealing information, and creatures that are recognizable and deeply wrong simultaneously. It’s what Resident Evil would be if it had pretensions to Cannes.
13. Upgrade (2018)
A near-future thriller where a man paralyzed in an attack is given an experimental AI implant called STEM that gives him superhuman combat abilities — and possibly has its own agenda. The action choreography is innovative and deeply unsettling, designed to look inhuman by intention. It’s a body horror action film wearing a revenge thriller’s clothing.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The first fight scene, where the protagonist watches his own body move without his control — deeply wrong, deeply cool.
- The final reveal, which recontextualizes every choice STEM made throughout the film.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Experimental biotech, corporations playing god with human bodies, and action sequences that look like they were designed by someone who hates joints. Alice’s nemesis has always been the technology she was enhanced with — this film gets that dread.
14. Bird Box (2018)
Sandra Bullock wears a blindfold for most of a film about entities that drive anyone who sees them to immediate, violent self-destruction. It spawned a meme format, a Netflix record, and a sequel nobody demanded. It’s also genuinely tense and uses its silly premise with more discipline than it deserves.
My Favourite Scenes:
- The river rapids sequence, which is terrifying primarily because everyone is blindfolded in white water rapids.
- The opening hospital scene, which establishes the rules of the world in one economical burst of panic.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: Civilization-ending outbreak, small group survival, a protagonist who is perpetually over it but keeps going anyway. Swap the blindfolds for a biohazard suit and you’re halfway to Raccoon City.
15. Mortal Kombat (2021)
Yes, it’s a fighting game adaptation. Yes, it has a character named Cole Young who was invented for the movie. Yes, it is completely unhinged. Mortal Kombat delivers supernatural martial arts violence at a pace that refuses to slow down for anything as inconvenient as plot coherence. Kano steals every scene he’s in and the fatalities are genuinely committed.
My Favourite Scenes:
- Sub-Zero vs. Jax, which delivers cold-based horror imagery with gleeful enthusiasm.
- The Kano/Sonya training sequence, which contains the funniest character work in any video game adaptation ever made.
Why Resident Evil Fans Will Love It: It’s another video game adaptation that leans into the game’s logic completely unironically. If you made peace with Alice doing gravity-defying kicks in the rain, you are fully equipped for this.
Go Forth and Survive (Or Don’t)
There you have it — fifteen films for the person who watched Milla Jovovich kill an entire mutant army with her psychic powers and thought, yes, I want more of this in my life. From cerebral body horror to gloriously stupid video game logic, the genre has something for every flavor of doom enthusiast. Whether you’re in it for the viral apocalypse, the shadowy mega-corporations, or just the cathartic experience of watching beautiful people punch things that used to be human, the movies on this list will keep you adequately terrified until the next Resident Evil reboot inevitably arrives. And it will. Trust me.
