Kids love video games, so almost any movie adapted from one is going to carry some degree of playground and/or internet cachet for the younger audience. How else to explain why my daughter was playing a Five Nights at Freddy’s–themed version of tag during third-grade recess, despite never having laid eyes on the game or the movies? Resident Evilmay not be the hottest property in gaming — especially in a year with a new Grand Theft Auto game — but the very fact that a new movie shares its name with a high-profile video-game series will be enough to pique the interests of many older kids (and probably some way-too-young ones, too). Parents, especially those up on the research indicating that video games <a href="https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/relationships/parenting/a71809087/video-games-kids-benefits/" rel="nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>might not be so bad for your kids’ health after all, might be tempted to play it cool and bring their middle- or high-school-aged kids out to see the movie, especially one with such positive critical reactions.
Some of those positive reactions are likely coming from people like me, who have never actually played the games in question but enjoy a well-made horror thriller. As for my almost-11-year-old gamer daughter, Resident Evil is neither the type of game nor the type of movie that she enjoys; she’s more about Deltarune (the game) and The Amazing Digital Circus(the streaming series). But her film-critic dad brings her to a lot of movies, too. I was raised by relatively permissive parents who typically let my interest in movies guide what I was “allowed” to watch, and I try to follow a similar principle with her. Context tends to be more important than content; the movie she most wants to watch that I won’t let her yet is Heathers — a movie I love but traffics in a style of satire whose pitch-black humor seems easier to appreciate and process as a teenager than as a tween. The fantasy violence of Mortal Kombat II, on the other hand — the recent movie, not the game — went over fine for both of us, and whatever Street Fighter is rated, we’ll go to that, too. She has no interest in Resident Evil, but I can imagine some of her middle-school friends showing curiosity. Should parents of those kids give in?
Interestingly, there aren’t really any signature Resident Evil characters for a young gamer to latch on to in the style of Mario, Sonic, or Freddy Fazbear — in this movie, anyway. Director/co-writer Zach Cregger has fashioned a movie with original characters set in the world of the games, where a virus outbreak caused by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation threatens the world with zombies and other hard-to-re-kill creatures. Mostly, the movie sticks with one particular character: Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who takes one last job on his about-to-end shift and winds up drawn into a life-threatening mission to reach Raccoon City Hospital before even more hell breaks loose. While Bryan the Medical Courier may not be a marquee attraction, Abrams plays his bumbling so hilariously yet relatably that some kids may be enticed.
Still, for most kids, the R rating for Resident Evil makes this a clear-cut case. While an enormous range of movies can receive a PG-13 — it probably won’t be long before a Paw Patrolmovie manages to get a PG-13 for brief rudeness, Ryder’s questionably attained emancipation, and a scene of pup partying — the “R” is meant as a de facto warning to really consider whether an under-17 audience should be watching the film in question. Sure, there are some R-rated movies that barely require any caution, but Resident Evilisn’t one of them; it’s a pretty hard R. While it’s far from the bleeding edge of its genre, there’s plenty of blood spatter; human bodies that are in turn zombified, mutated, and/or exploded; and gnarly creatures who stopped living and became mixed-up zombies.
It’s not all gore, either; there’s also the sustained tension of a guy who has to make his way through an increasingly monster-populated landscape. Cregger doesn’t deal exclusively in jump scares, but there are a couple of doozies in that department. The tone isn’t quite as bonkers-silly as Sam Raimi’s funny-scary Evil Deadsequels, but given the comic performance at its center, it’s not far off. Even if it’s not aiming to disturb, you probably shouldn’t take an under-14-year-old to see this.
And yet! All of that might be secondary to whether you have a horror kid.
Horror kids are built differently. They also can be hard to identify. Some kids might think they thirst for the cultural transgression of a forbidden horror film but are just in search of playground bragging rights that will actually give them nightmares. (We had these in the ’80s, too, when Freddy Krueger merchandise expanded the reach of the Nightmare on Elm Streetmovies.) On the other hand, our family knows a neighborhood sixth-grader who sees most of the major horror releases with a parent, out of a genuine interest in the genre. She is admittedly an outlier; most horror kids will fall somewhere in between those extremes of fake bravado and nerves of steel. But if your child has been seeking out Tim Burton movies for years, finds movie monsters more fascinating than terrifying, or constantly dresses up as a genuinely ghoulish character or creature for Halloween (or just for fun), you might have a horror kid on your hand.
If you have a true horror kid, they might be able to handle this movie at an age as seemingly inappropriate as 10 or 11. If your kid isn’t that dedicated but has seen some PG-13 creature features or lighter R movies and they’re at least 13, that should be fine. (You’ll have to go with them, of course; it’s the MPAA’s general rule and not, in this case, a bad one.) And if they’re on the borderline — horror-curious, perhaps, but lacking experience — I will say this: Tons of kids, including my supposedly horror-averse daughter, watch Stranger Things, and while Resident Evil has a considerably more mordant sense of humor and less affirming outlook on life, its creature-versus-humans gore is not always so far removed from the most violent moments of that series.
Personally, I find zombie-and-creature-related gore less upsetting, both as a viewer and as a parent, than more human-scale mutilation. If a human turns into a zombie or mutates into some unholy creature before getting their head blown off, it abstracts the violence to some degree. That really violent scene in Obsessioninvolving a simple brick and steering wheel is far more disturbing to me than anything that happens in Resident Evil, even though the latter’s body count is far higher. (For that matter, The Departedhas a far more haunting headshot than any zombie movie I’ve ever seen.) That doesn’t make the violence less hard R, to be clear. It’s just a particular kind of gore — and it may well disturb plenty of kids. But I figure if you’re truly thinking about letting a preteen kid watch Resident Evil, you might be interested in parsing the movie’s particular gore style. I tend to worry the most about images of sexual violence or other forms of abuse, and that’s not a part of this movie at all.
The thing that bothers my daughter more than blood, gore, or creatures is even the implication that harm has come to a child. (She has made it clear that teenagers, however, are fair game for whatever.) At one point relatively early in Resident Evil, our hapless hero must creep through a large camper van that is blocking his exit from a tunnel. There, he encounters a tweenage girl cowering in the bathroom. He attempts to help her; it does not go well.
As far as kid peril goes, this one doesn’t go all the way to the limit, Terrifierstyle. While the girl pleads for help, it quickly becomes obvious that she is suffering from a virus-caused mutation, causing her foot to expand into a writhing mass of tentacles. (It’s gross! This movie is very fun and very gross.) Still, she presents for a little while longer as a kid afraid of what’s happening to her, in need of a grown-up’s aid. It’s only after Bryan dutifully and squeamishly attempts to help her that she opens up her gigantic monster maw and attacks him, making it clear that while there may be some trace of human left, he can’t help her without getting killed. It’s her or him, and, well, he does have a shotgun handy.
It’s probably the most outright disturbing scene in the film, give or take a monster-heavy climax. In general, the movie is a little murky about how human its monsters are. A later plot turn suggests that the journey away from humanity is a fairly prolonged one, retroactively implying that this girl may not have been simply tricking Bryan but expressing genuine fear. The movie doesn’t dwell on this idea, but kids might. If that’s not something you want your child to see, skip Resident Evil.
If your kid falls into that horror-curious category, there’s actually an easy try-out available. The previous Resident Evil film series — not Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a John Carpenter homage that most kids probably won’t cotton to, but the one featuring Milla Jovovich — is more action heavy than pure horror. It’s sometimes gory (the very first film has an iconic couple of slice-and-dice lasers), but it’s just as influenced by The Matrixas it is by Alien or George Romero. If your kid is enthusiastic about watching those but can’t ultimately handle them, the Cregger version will be too intense. If they complain that the zombie material is a little boilerplate, congratulations, you’ve got a horror kid on your hands.
Can I Take My Kid to See Resident Evil?
