I’m fairly certain that RESIDENT EVIL doesn’t even make it to the ten-minute mark before its well-meaning hero, Bryan (Austin Abrams), is covered in blood and screaming for his life. The first and most significant thing that anyone is likely to notice about Zack Cregger’s crazed and confident stab at adapting CAPCOM‘s beloved franchise of survival-horror video games is that this sucker moves with the unrelenting ferocity of its ravenous undead hordes. In the frantic opening minutes of the film, we are introduced to our reluctant protagonist as he is navigating the personal crisis of a pregnancy scare with his girlfriend Michelle while trying to get his final medical delivery for the night. Once he accepts that fateful assignment that sends him down the snowy mountain roads towards Raccoon City, neither Bryan nor the audience are given more than a few moments to breathe and take stock before a bloody car crash and an even bloodier encounter with a doomed state patroller force Bryan to take up arms and start running and shooting his way through the monsters that are bearing down from every dark corner.

Throughout his promotional tour for the film, Cregger has been quick to emphasize how much his interest in helming the latest attempt to bring CAPCOM‘s legendary property to the silver screen lies in capturing the feeling of playing a meticulously crafted survival-horror experience, and not so much in carrying over the decades of accumulated bioterror backstory and soap opera melodrama. This, I think, was absolutely the right call. While there are plenty of visual nods to iconic elements from the games — a stray can of health spray, a safe room with a dusty old typewriter at its center, progress-barring padlocks that demand keys engraved with conspicuous symbols — RESIDENT EVIL is not concerned at all with the typical drudgery of dragging the same old story beats and characters out from whatever decrepit shaft of the IP Mines they’ve been trapped in for the last 30 years. I’m sure there are many diehard fans of the games who will be disappointed or even angry to learn that this movie will not be yet another remixing of storylines and boss monsters from specific RESIDENT EVIL games, but I would argue that Blumhouse Studio’s misguided Five Nights at Freddy’s series has demonstrated just how much we all stand to lose when a studio cares too much about activating the nostalgia-fueled dopamine receptors of its most lore-addled gatekeepers and not enough about making a proper, functional horror film.

Instead of worrying about finding the least awkward places to cram in cameos of everyone’s favorite Kennedys or Redfields, Cregger’s brutally efficient script locks in on the structure and pacing of the finest survival horror set pieces, and it is anchored by Austin Abram’s eminently likable and charming willingness to jump headfirst into whatever crazy cacophony of ultraviolence Cregger has devised. RESIDENT EVIL‘s greatest success is in how it intuitively understands the satisfaction that comes from navigating the constantly escalating set-pieces that define the best RE games’ design. The movie is defined less by the traditional three-act structure of a Hollywood script than by the “levels” Bryan must shoot and sprint his way across. We begin with a quiet, isolated trip into the snowy Colorado mountains, complete with a tension-filled excursion to a lone cabin in the woods. Then, after braving the unexpected horrors of undead flesh-eaters and tentacle-spewing demon dogs, Bryan has to carefully creep through a tunnel of the damned. The middle portion of the film sees Bryan rack up a body count and upgrade his weaponry as he makes his way through the streets (and sewers!) of Raccoon City proper.

The movie saves the best of its surprises, including some truly disgusting examples of its mix of practical and computer-generated special effects, for the climactic ascent of Raccoon City General Hospital. Each location that Bryan moves through is filled with awesome and horrifying creature designs that push the boundaries of good taste in the best way, and I can only hope that the artists working on the next games in the franchise are taking notes. The music by Cregger’s regular collaborators, Ryans and Hays Holladay, also worms its way into every scene, creating an appropriately moody atmosphere. I will leave the grumbling about missing cameos and clashes with canon to the disgruntled literalists. So far as I’m concerned, this movie has earned the right to carve the name of RESIDENT EVIL in jagged letters onto its very bones.

Zack Cregger famously got his start in the business with the sketch-comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U Know, and his knack for absurd comedic flourishes and timing mostly serves to elevate the entertainment factor of Bryan’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Trip to Raccoon City. Bryan’s expletive-laden color commentary runs through his entire gauntlet through the woods and across the bloody streets of the city, striking the perfect balance of making the hero more sympathetic and relatable without diffusing the very real horror of his circumstances. He is, in many ways, the best possible version of the poor shmucks who always find themselves running for their lives when Umbrella Corp. starts getting feisty with the gene-splicing and quarterly finance reports. Bryan consistently demonstrates a knack for solving puzzles and adapting to each fresh new hell that Raccoon City spits up from its foul gullet, and he is genuinely heroic with how earnest he is to help out the scant few survivors he encounters along the way. That doesn’t mean that he won’t squeal in terror and scream hundreds of bitter curses into the frozen night about how awful and ridiculous his life has become, and who among us would be right there with him, grumbling about all of these “stupid monsters?”

It’s in the more obvious and self-conscious humor that RESIDENT EVIL overplays its hand, somewhat. As the night goes on, Bryan crosses paths with several representatives of the esteemed Umbrella Corporation, and they are without fail portrayed as feckless idiots who doomed the world mostly on account of their Three Stooges-esque talent for shenanigans. On the one hand, I can appreciate the satire of framing the heralds of the apocalypse as overpaid nincompoops whose lust for profits drowned the last of their functioning brain cells. That said, the silliness of these Umbrella mooks threatens to defang the story’s only real antagonist and make Bryan seem like a comparative Leon S. Kennedy in resolve and skill. One character in particular is played by Paul Walter Hauser as such a broad comic caricature that he almost seems transplanted from a completely different movie with a completely incongruous tone.

Then there is the matter of the movie’s rather abrupt ending. Personally, I respect how Cregger and his team refused to compromise the breakneck pace and horror tone in RESIDENT EVIL’s final moments. This is my way of saying that the movie does not so much as “end” as it does “slam into the credits with all of the warning and subtlety of a car colliding with a brick wall.” Some freaks, such as myself, will find themselves applauding with the Evil Dead-style swerves the final act takes. Many viewers, I am sure, will be more than a little pissed off.

Then again, the Resident Evil games are notorious for making hard swerves in their climactic levels that fans either adore or begrudgingly tolerate, so this is nothing if not more proof that Zack Cregger has earned his bona fides. This lean, mean, beautifully shot production has finally managed to translate the best aspects of these games into an entirely different medium. Not only is this easily the best RESIDENT EVIL movie we’ve seen, it stands as one of the best video game adaptations ever made, at least by my reckoning.