For years, “video game movie” was shorthand for bad scripts, worse CGI and a studio’s apparent belief that a recognizable logo could stand in for a storyline and thrills. Zach Cregger may have finally put that reputation to rest; his Resident Evil took in $60 million from 3,684 theatres in the U.S. and Canada on its opening weekend, a record for the franchise, and added $48.3 million overseas for a $108.3 million global debut. That’s on a reported $75 million budget. Reviews have been just as kind, with a 95 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Alas, Cregger isn’t the first to pull scares out of a controller. Here are eight adaptations that made us sleep with the lights on.
1. Resident Evil (2002)
Before it became a six-film action franchise, Paul W.S. Anderson‘s original was a lean, claustrophobic siege movie set in the Hive, an underground lab. The laser-grid corridor alone gave a generation of teenagers nightmares. Add the Licker and a malevolent AI called the Red Queen, and you had proof the brand could frighten people on screen.
2. Doom (2005)
It’s not a great movie, and we won’t pretend otherwise. But Andrzej Bartkowiak‘s Mars-set creature feature earns its place for one audacious stunt: a first-person-shooter sequence that puts Karl Urban‘s POV behind the gun as he blasts through a corridor of mutants. It’s gimmicky and gory, and it still gets a reaction.
3. Silent Hill (2006)
This is still the gold standard. Christophe Gans understood that Konami’s series was about atmosphere, not action, and he filled the screen with falling ash, wailing air-raid sirens and a town that peels away into rust and blood. Pyramid Head‘s arrival is pure nightmare fuel, and the barbed-wire climax remains one of the most brutal set pieces in a mainstream horror film of its decade.
4. Werewolves Within (2021)
Here’s the wildcard: a whodunit horror-comedy based on a Ubisoft VR party game. Josh Ruben‘s snowbound mystery stars Sam Richardson as a forest ranger trapped with a town full of suspects while something with claws picks them off. It’s funny, but the paranoia is real, and the kills hit harder than you’d expect.
5. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
Johannes Roberts‘ reboot didn’t set the box office on fire, but it’s the first live-action Resident Evil that actually looks like the games. It’s set in 1998, with the Spencer Mansion and the Raccoon City police station rendered in grimy, rain-soaked detail. It’s a love letter to the PlayStation originals, and the mansion sequence delivers genuine old-school jolts.
6. The Last of Us (2023–)
Yes, it’s TV, but we couldn’t leave it off. HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s game gave us the clickers, fungal horrors that hunt by sound. The second episode’s museum sequence is as tense as anything the genre has produced in years, and it’s proof that prestige television can do real horror.
7. Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
Critics shrugged, but audiences didn’t, and the film opened to roughly $80 million domestically even while streaming at home. Emma Tammi‘s adaptation of Scott Cawthon‘s game gets its creep factor from the animatronics built by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. There’s something primal about a hulking mechanical bear moving in the dark, and a whole generation of younger fans got their first taste of horror here.
8. Until Dawn (2025)
David F. Sandberg took the branching-path game and turned it into a time-loop gauntlet. A group of friends dies night after night, and each reset brings a new horror. It’s a smart way to adapt a game built on do-overs, and it plays like a sampler of sub-genres, from slashers to body horror. It also gets bonus points for bringing back Peter Stormare‘s unsettling Dr. Hill.
Cregger’s Resident Evil is in theatres now.
