Resident Evil finds comedy in overly dedicated gig economy worker
Spoilers for Resident Evil (2026)
One of the remarkable sources of humor in Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil are his mostly moronic characters and their gleeful abuse by the film. Austin Abrams as our lead Bryan and two others stuck out to me most as caricatures of recognizable people from our workplaces, and we laugh at their antics partly in recognition of their behavior within an extreme situation such as the apocalypse.
Bryan represents the modern gig economy worker: your ubereats, your postmates, doordash, grubhub, instacart, lyft driver. He is willing to sacrifice himself and his relationships for the prospect of one more contract. He’s dedicated to the grind, lying about his capabilities like an interviewee desperate for a job. The film’s mcguffin resides inside a package that is very reminiscent of those that food delivery drivers use to preserve the heat of their client’s order. For a portion of the film, despite all the horrors encountered, Bryan continues onwards towards his contracted assignment out of professional obligation. His attitude regarding the job and his commitment to see it through has been conditioned over hundreds of previously fulfilled contracts. Bryan is the type of person who would respond positively to the requirement to show up to work despite the world literally ending around him. When Bryan finally does arrive at the end point of his journey he puts on his lanyard and states “Someone’s going to have to sign for this,” as if it was just another delivery like the one we watch him make at the film’s opening. We see how lost Bryan is in the routine movements of his job that he doesn’t seem to recognize this one is unlike all that came before.
After exiting a dark tunnel of abandoned vehicles, Bryan sees his stalker, an amalgamation of human limbs and flesh turning itself over like a ball to move forward. Bryan, ever the inept protagonist, fails to shoot his shotgun accurately and is saved by the arrival of Umbrella enforcer Maxine, played by Kali Reis, who disembarks her vehicle and proceeds to ward off the creature with many stable shots from her pistol. Maxine is the ace worker, the reliable kind of employee many turn to as a rock in times of trouble. She is all business, eyes on the road, curtly reminding her fellow Umbrella employee not to spill the details of the company’s many secrets to this medical courier. Once inside Raccoon City she dispatches a crowd of zombies easily before investigating further down and around the corner to some unseen threat. It is not long before Paul, the other Umbrella staff member, determines it is time to go and leave Maxine behind. This swift and automatic abandonment reveals for all your loyalty and performance you will be abandoned at a moment's notice when you become inconvenient to those above you.
Paul Walter Hauser as Paul is presented as an Umbrella scientist but comes across much more as a middle management staffer, the type who throws their weight of authority around no matter how small it may be. You see this firsthand with Paul ordering Bryan to go out and retrieve the keys from the unseen Maxine, now a bisected corpse. Paul makes excuses as to why he cannot do it and why Bryan is more fitting, all while criticizing and pushing Bryan forward, going so far as to honk the horn to speed up his movement. Paul is shortly thereafter dispatched by the creature but we see a successor later on with another scientist named Carl who cowers behind a desk and sends others into danger. A supposed cure to the virus exists within a syringe and scientists have been dismembered, splattered against the wall, and consumed by a converted Bryan who adds each corpse to his own mass. Carl is naturally felled alongside the rest, and Bryan fails to be injected with the cure, ending the film with a succumbing roar.
Cregger is making fun of gig workers with a death drive devotion to the work despite the obvious dangers to their own livelihood and social well being, of adept employees loyal unto their death with zero loyalty returned, and of the cowardly and pushy middle managers who are more than willing to sacrifice others perceived as below their own placement on the hierarchy. And it is all quite funny thanks to all of their performances, though Kali Reis as Maxine sadly gets the least to do as the stern but badass figure whose superior skill is only matched by her swift exit in yet another joke of watching the most capable individual get murked off-screen while our hapless hero stumbles his way towards his ultimate end.
