When questioned about the influences of Resident Evil, a survival horror game that became significant since its creation in 1996, its three Japanese creators cited George Romero, Tobe Hooper, and Alfred Hitchcock. The American industrial cinema quickly returned the favor, exploiting the game's success through a franchise featuring Milla Jovovich, while George Romero himself worked on an adaptation project that never came to fruition. In 2026, Zach Cregger — recently acclaimed for the success of Évanouis — is tasked with reviving this thirty-year-old machine, whose popularity has never really waned. One of the historical founders of the game, Hideki Kamiya, recently reflected on the creation of a less oppressive aesthetic, even suggesting a "fearless" gameplay mode, where one could "simply enjoy the puzzles and combat in a fun and relaxed atmosphere." Although his statements were made after the film's release, they resonate with Cregger's project on one point: the latter, both offbeat and risky, fits into a problematic in-between, between an attempt to return to a message-driven horror cinema (the film's ending crudely explicates its political metaphor) and cynical entertainment, constantly activating the "fearless mode" through irony. A certain mindset is immediately apparent at the beginning of the film: Bryan (Austin Abrams), the main character, is a medical courier at the end of his rope, performing his tasks while learning about his girlfriend's pregnancy on the phone; he thus appears not really concerned with what he is doing. A particular errand will lead him to the snow-covered countryside of Colorado, where the "game" will begin. This errand, which Bryan will complete after 1h30 of film, seems to be a metaphor for the project led by Cregger: the package that the character carries as a burden is the universe of Resident Evil that the director must carry while having, like his hero, his head somewhat elsewhere. The film is both striking in some of its plastic creations, and insignificant, even incoherent in its overall narrative. One feels that Cregger wants to highlight the work (remarkable, it must be said) of his special effects creator, Shane Mahan: the transformation of the creatures that cross Bryan's path offers a spectacle in itself, and nothing is more powerful than the moments where the bodies reveal their monstrosity (for example, a girl with an infected foot), dismember, interlock, or aggregate with each other. However, this beautiful plastic work is not supported by the narrative, which merely follows the mechanics of the game, obeying an endless forward-moving principle. Each setting is then reduced to a difficulty that must be destroyed or circumvented: a barn guarded by a Cerberus, sewers where an obese man sleeps, a laboratory stormed by zombies... And each obstacle overcome provides poor Bryan with the meager satisfaction of a coward who has overcome his fears. The film thus progresses in "fearless mode." Cregger knows he is piloting an old toy and does not pretend to evoke fear, but this ironic side, which has been part of his cinema since Barbarian, turns against the very principle of Resident Evil. The slow progress of the player in a deregulated and hostile universe, the fragile and progressive exploration of the settings in "survival mode": all these elements are strangely more sensitive in Backrooms by Kane Parsons than in Cregger, who nevertheless traverses the "backrooms" of America, but without taking the risk of getting lost, almost without even seeing them. Guided by the absurd race of his mediocre protagonist, Resident Evil ends up curiously resembling him.