Zach Cregger has vowed not to get involved with existing franchises again. However, if Resident Evil is his only attempt at it, it is a really good one.

It is a wild, midnight movie kind of experience, meant to be seen with a raucous crowd in the mood for something weird.

It is a fascinating deconstruction of the genre, picked apart to serve the filmmaker’s themes. Jane Schoenbrun’s films are alive and exciting because they go wherever they want.

It is unsettling, disturbing, deeply weird, surreal and effective, even if I can’t always explain how it is those things. It is fascinating.

It is a pretty solid genre entry that occasionally hints at the richer story dancing at its edges.

Hokum is entertaining, creepy and suspenseful. It generates a sense of dread through its location, an old hotel, mixed with the way the past haunts the protagonist.

Its sense of humor is refreshingly goofy, yet it really only has a few jokes. It is an amusing concept that doesn’t have enough ideas to make it worth a look.

Even with the derivative plot and missed opportunities, the Ready or Not universe contains enough cleverness to get through a second round.

The sound design is excellent. It is creepy and insinuating. It feels weird to describe a movie where nothing graphic appears on screen as deeply unsettling, but this definitely is.

It certainly contains elements from its predecessor, mixing it with aspects of A Nightmare on Elm Street to create a next step that is sort of logical. The result is uneven to say the least.