One of the best things about playing a Resident Evil game is all the disgusting creatures you have to kill. Is that a dog that shoots tentacles at you? Is it a 15-foot-tall undead human? You just never know. And in Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, which is now in theaters, half the fun is watching what crazy monsters he has in store for audiences.
Some of these you’ve seen in the trailers. Most of them you have not. But below, we ranked all of them based on an imperfect system that considers how disturbing they are, how gross, and how significant to the story. Resident Evil doesn’t have a post-credits scene, so these monsters are its biggest spoilers. Beware.
11. Undead people
The bottom of the list is, clearly, the creatures the trailers are super comfortable showing: the pseudo-regular people. That starts with the seemingly normal-looking woman that Bryan first encounters on his ill-fated evening. She’s a good place setter for what’s to come, and plays a slightly bigger role later, but when put up against everything else we see later, she’s the bottom of the list. This also goes for the couple who live in the farmhouse. They’re just kind of your basic undead we’ve seen in a billion movies before. Until they’re not.
10. Human bombs
Most of the creatures in the film don’t have official names, at least in the movie as we watch it. So we’re going to come up with our own names, starting here. This refers to the creatures who see Bryan walking down the street and launch themselves at him from the surrounding rooftops like a bomb. It’s super messed-up and funny but, ultimately, just a slight evolution of the classic infected from the start of the film.
9. Bubble monsters
The same goes for these guys. These are the creatures in the above photo which, we now know, come from cocoons in the maternity ward at Raccoon City Hospital. They seem to be a bigger, stronger version of the classic infected creatures but still mostly human-looking. We’re giving extra points for NOT human-looking. Which brings us to…
8. Undead Dog
Cregger had to get this one in there, right? Resident Evil kicked off with a dog and, in this film, we first think the dog on the farm is simply a guard dog. That’s not the case. After scaring us with his smashing powers, he opens up the flaps of his face and shoots tentacles at Bryan. The dog gives us two jump scares almost back to back, and it’s great.
7. People Pile: Version Two
“People Pile” is the name we’re giving the film’s primary antagonist, the snowballing creature who over the course of the movie becomes bigger and more manic as it ingests and incorporates different people. Version two, in our mind, is the one from the second half of the film when it’s eaten many more people. It’s really gross, really cool, but by the time it gets that big, it’s not quite as terrifying as the earlier version, in our eyes. It still rules, though.
6. Acid Puker
One of the best sequences in the film is when Bryan is in the elevator, and the bloated man starts vomiting acid on it, leaving him less and less room to stand. It’s just such a perfect balance of scary, disgusting, and hilarious, all while raising the stakes for Bryan. Plus, Bryan gets a good final shot on him, which we loved.
5. People Pile: Version One
As killer as the bigger, more advanced People Pile is, we’re still disturbed by the first one. You know, the one that incorporates not just the undead woman from the beginning, but the married couple from the farmhouse. It’s the version we see briefly in the trailer (and in the top image of this article), which we also see traversing the woods like a killer Ferris wheel. It’s so, so messed up and much scarier when it’s a little more minimal.
4. The Rat Man
No, that’s not a typo. Yes, the man is fat, and it would be easy to call him “The Fat Man.” But he’s also full of rats. And, well, a Rat Man is much scarier than a Fat Man. This Dune-looking terror would’ve ranked pretty high on his own, but the fact that he’s this size because he’s chock full of killer, undead rats just makes him even better.
3. The Little Girl
This was the moment that Resident Evil really took things to another level. Bryan finds a scared little girl in a camper and realizes she’s been infected because her entire foot looks like the roots of a tree. She then attacks him with her foot, while still pretending to be innocent, only to eventually open her face into a Demogorgon flower. It’s just such an awesome, unexpected escalation.
2. Bryan
We said there were going to be spoilers. That aforementioned little girl bites Bryan and, by the end, he too becomes a disgusting, evil creature. He’s kind of his own People Pile, but just with more personality and incredible design. It’s sad, but also incredible to look at and easily would have been at the top of the list. Except for one small thing.
1. Spider Baby
Even Zach Cregger has his limits. He can have men burst open with rats or vomit acid, but when you see the tiny baby hands pop out of a crib, it’s almost too much to handle. And then for a brief second, you see that this baby has several eyes. The film then quickly cuts away as Bryan, rightfully, runs away, but you just get the sense that this mash-up of a spider and a baby was so messed up and so disturbing that even someone as twisted as Zach Cregger didn’t want to fully reveal it. And that mystery, along with its horrendous potential, puts it at the top of our list.
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