Video game movies do not have a great reputation, but their reputation is getting better. As modern filmmakers do a better job of understanding and cracking the source material, adapting it faithfully and effectively for the silver screen (or at least, doing that more often), the overall stats for video game adaptations seem to be on the rise, with better and better movie versions coming out all the time.
Still, the history of video game movies remains littered with cheap cash-ins and well-intentioned disappointments, and you can really tell from looking at all the live-action horror movies that have come out in the last few decades. Scary video games are incredibly immersive, but many of the movies based on those games have fallen prey to unconvincing production values, amateurish writing/directing/acting, and bizarre and ridiculous tones that weren’t necessarily in the games to begin with.
Let’s take a look at every horror movie based on a video game — there are a lot more than you probably realize — and see how they all stack up these days, shall we?
28. ‘Dead Trigger’ (2017)
Dolph Lundgren trains new recruits to hunt zombies in a remarkably cheap, sophomoric action-horror movie with forgettable characters, and a nothing plot. Based on a mobile game, which is appropriate, since you’d be forgiven for “watching” this movie while fiddling with your phone. Lundgren tries to add some star power, but it’s an uphill battle. Only the film’s silly twist ending — combined with a second twist ending, entirely via voice-over, that plays like a post-production studio note — is noteworthy.
27. ‘Zombie Massacre’ (2013)
The “Zombie Massacre” movies are only on this list as a technicality, since they’re based on a video game that doesn’t exist. The intention was that the “Zombie Massacre” game would exist, and would be released on the Nintendo Wii, but that never happened. Instead we got two films, the first of which is dull and sloppy and incredibly poorly acted. The plot involves a group of annoying badasses who are enlisted to nuke a zombie outbreak to destroy all the evidence, but they’re betrayed and have to fight their way out before the bomb blows. A good idea, executed very, very badly. Look out for the cameo from notorious video game movie director Uwe Boll as [checks notes] the President of the United States?! Oh no…
26. ‘Silent Hill: Revelation’ (2012)
Having a real budget and knowing what to do with it aren’t always the same thing. Compared to many of the films at the lower end of our rankings, “Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D” looks pretty glossy, but it’s in service of a lousy story and it features some astoundingly underwhelming performances. Just don’t blame folks like Adelaide Clemens and Kit Harington — any actor would struggle with this dialogue. Clemens plays the little girl from the first movie, all grown up, and she’s tracked down by cultists and forced to return to the haunted title town. The only “revelation” here is that you just wasted your time.
25. ‘Dead Rising: Endgame’ (2016)
The second “Dead Rising” movie is a huge step down from the freewheeling, surprisingly strong original. Jesse Metcalfe is back as an investigative reporter, trying to track down his missing producer from the first “Dead Rising” and also blow the lid off of a massive government conspiracy to kill everyone in America who’s been exposed to a zombie virus. A solid set-up, and there are moments when “Endgame” reminds us fondly of what made the first film work, but the budget seems to have been slashed dramatically, leading to a tedious journey through empty buildings with only the occasional zombie to add to what we will charitably call “tension.”
24. ‘Doom’ (2005)
Don’t get too excited by the cast. Karl Urban, Dwayne Johnson and Rosamund Pike star in a big-budget adaptation of one of the most influential games ever made, about monsters from Hell unleashed on a futuristic Mars colony. Somehow director Andrzej Bartkowiak manages to mess up a very simple premise, straying from what makes “Doom” work, replacing the horror and thrills with bland characters and confusing action sequences. A first-person set piece is a brief distraction from all that tedium, and it’s mildly interesting to watch Dwayne Johnson in one of his very few villain roles, but that’s about it really.
23. ‘Resident Evil: Apocalypse’ (2004)
Paul W.S. Anderson’s first “Resident Evil” movie was enjoyably over-the-top, but was widely criticized by fans of the franchise for sidestepping the events of the game. On the surface “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” looks like a course correction for the film series, taking place during the zombie apocalypse and featuring more characters from the games. But it’s also borderline incomprehensible, childishly written, and a mostly a chore to sit through. A few delirious moments of total action movie nonsense are a very welcome respite from everything else in the movie, but none of it really works.
22. ‘Alone in the Dark II’ (2005)
Another course correction gone awry: “Alone in the Dark II” takes the movie franchise back the relatively grounded, Lovecraftian noir roots of the video games, after Uwe Boll’s first film turned out to be wacky bullcrap. But Boll’s film was, in comparison, entertainingly wacky bullcrap, whereas Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer’s largely unrelated follow-up is a bit of a self-serious bore. Rick Yune takes over the lead role from Christian Slater, and he’s a serious upgrade, but despite a game cast of character actor luminaries (Danny Trejo, Lance Henriksen, Bill Mosely) the film never finds its own footing.
21. ‘Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead’ (2015)
And now a course correction gone right, for a change. Well, somewhat. The directors of “Zombie Massacre” returned for a very different and significantly more competent prequel set during World War II. “Reich of the Dead” tells the story of a group of American soldiers who run into a Nazi experiment on P.O.W.s that turned them into an undead horde. The limited setting does wonders for the production values, and the cast is putting in the work, giving the situation some much-needed weight. It’s still not a particularly good motion picture but, unlike the first “Zombie Massacre,” it comes across like a real film.
20. ‘Alone in the Dark’ (2005)
Uwe Boll’s weirdly large filmography of video game adaptations is nothing to be particularly impressed by. But compared to many of the perfunctory and/or misguided films that came out after his notorious misfires, Boll’s movies don’t seem so bad. Or to be more accurate, they don’t seem so unwatchable. They’re badly written, badly acted, and often badly photographed, but they’re energetic and unapologetic about all that badness. “Alone in the Dead” is a very poor movie but its incompetence is amusing, provided you can get over any expectations you may have had that the movie would be taken seriously. Christian Slater plays paranormal investigator Edward Carnby, Tara Reid is as miscast as any actor has ever been as a brilliant archaeologist, and it’s all so frickin’ ridiculous.
19. ‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’ (2021)
After a half-dozen live-action “Resident Evil” movies that, for better or worse, treated the events of the game like toilet paper, a relatively faithful reboot sounded like a pretty good idea. How naive we were. “Welcome to Raccoon City” tries to adapt the events of the first and second games simultaneously, but the stories don’t overlap well, resulting in half the cast fighting zombies while the other half wanders through a dilapidated mansion, building suspense for when they finally fight zombies. Those two stories can’t play simultaneously without undermining each other. Interesting cinematography and a game cast do their best to save the material, but it only works in fits and starts.
18. ‘Bloodrayne’ (2005)
Uwe Boll’s first “Bloodrayne” movie, based on a video game about a sexy vampire killing Nazis, omits the whole “killing Nazis” part. In its place is a medieval origin story. Kristanna Loken plays the title antihero and Michelle Rodriguez and Michael Madsen play vampire hunters who take her under their wing. Ben Kingsley — yes, really — plays the main bad guy, and he’s phoning it in like nobody’s business. (If you take a drink every time Ben Kingsley bothers to get out of his chair, you’ll be stone cold sober the whole time.) “Bloodrayne” is rather amusing as camp, and extremely unconvincing as anything else.
17. ‘Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance’ (2007)
Two “Bloodrayne” movies into the franchise and we still haven’t gotten to the whole point of the video game series, i.e. “sexy vampire killing Nazis.” But “Deliverance” is a big improvement on the first film. This time our antihero, played by Natassia Malthe (co-star of the genuinely good, albeit very silly video game adaptation “DOA: Dead or Alive”), fights a vampire Billy the Kid in the Wild West. That’s a fun idea, and Boll manages to stick to a single tone for most of the film, which helps tremendously. Frequent Boll collaborator Zack Ward plays Billy the Kid, and he’s having a field day; sometimes that enthusiasm is a little infectious.
16. ‘Bloodrayne: The Third Reich’ (2011)
It finally happened. It took three whole movies but Uwe Boll finally made a “Bloodrayne” movie where she’s actually killing Nazis. And while it’s hardly a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, and not a particularly good one by most other stretches, it’s certainly the most satisfying entry in the whole series. Malthe returns as the vampire hero, Michael Paré plays a vampire Nazi bad guy (after playing unrelated characters in both of the previous films), and Clint Howard plays an off-brand Josef Mengele, which is just as weird as it sounds.
15. ‘House of the Dead’ (2003)
When Uwe Boll released the first “House of the Dead” movie it was extremely unpopular. Video game fans actively hated it. It had very little to do with the source material (not that those original railgun shooters had much of a story to adapt, if we’re being honest). It doesn’t even take place in a house. Mostly it’s set at a Sega-sponsored isolated island rave (which is a thing that happened in the early 2000s, if Uwe Boll can be believed) and then eventually moves into a somewhat large shack. But even so, like many of Boll’s other films, it’s amusingly catastrophic, with high energy kitsch and laugh-out-loud embarrassing moments aplenty. Boll’s budget-conscious take on bullet time is actually pretty effective, although his decision to randomly intercut shots of the actual game will always be a weird little headscratcher.
14. ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’ (2016)
The final installment of Anderson’s “Resident Evil” franchise (which was, of course, promptly rebooted) brought Milla Jovovich’s superpowered zombie-killing badass Alice back to the lab from the original film, via a post-apocalyptic wasteland, as she teams up with some of the cooler characters who survived the previous movies. It’s not much to look at, frankly, since Anderson muted his color palette this time around, and although some of the over the top action sequences are entertaining, it looks like everyone involved is ready for this chapter of their lives to be over. Anderson’s last “Resident Evil” isn’t hard to watch, it just isn’t very interesting or memorable.
13. ‘House of the Dead 2’ (2005)
The thing about low-budget straight to video movies is, sometimes the filmmakers try a lot harder than anyone expected them to. “House of the Dead 2” is a great example. It’s got a witty, imaginative screenplay with memorable characters, led by Emmanuelle Vaugier as a zombie-fighting badass leading a squad of soldiers into an infected college campus. Genuinely funny on its own terms, and kinda exciting when it wants to be, “House of the Dead 2” would probably have a better reputation among horror fans if it was a standalone movie, and not directly connected to Boll’s notorious misfire.
12. ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ (2023)
This blockbuster adaptation of the incredibly popular horror game series “Five Nights at Freddy’s” stars Josh Hutcherson as a man who takes a crappy job as a security guard for a dilapidated family-themed restaurant, where the animatronics come alive and — depending on their whims — have an innocent time bonding with you, or go on a killing spree. The monsters are a treat to behold, and when “Five Nights at Freddy’s” focuses on their off-putting mechanics the film is a satisfying adaptation. But story-wise it just doesn’t make sense. Also the protagonist literally spends most of the film fast asleep, which isn’t as exciting as the filmmakers clearly thought it was. Still, flaws and all, the adaptation scratches a very real itch for “FNAF” fans, and leaves room for serious improvements in the sequel(s).
11. ‘Doom: Annihilation’ (2019)
Speaking of low-budget straight-to-video movies where the filmmakers tried a lot harder than anyone expected them to, “Doom: Annihilation” is actually pretty danged good. Tony Giglio wrote and directed a relatively faithful adaptation of the “Doom” video games, starring Amy Manson as a space marine fighting zombies and monsters on Mars, eventually winding up in a hell dimension with a very big f’ing gun. For a low-budget movie “Annihilation” allocates its resources well, making the most of the action and production design convincing… mostly. If you can get past the fact that the movie would have benefitted from a few million more dollars, it’s one of the better live-action horror movies based on a video game. Not that anyone seems to have noticed.
10. ‘Silent Hill’ (2006)
For many years Christophe Gans’ “Silent Hill” was hailed as one of the best video game adaptations. And it was… back in 2006. Gans does an exceptional job of capturing the eerie aesthetic of the early, brilliant “Silent Hill” games, but the film falls apart quickly, thanks to an extremely wonky plot and many muddled metaphors. The movie stars Radha Mitchell as a mother investigating her adopted daughter’s mysterious past, but many of the biggest moments stem from the game “Silent Hill 2,” in which all the imagery represented a male protagonist’s insecure masculine libido, so it just doesn’t make sense in this context. It’s still better than a lot of other video game movies, but as you may have noticed while reading this list there are a lot of bad ones out there, wrecking the curve.
9. ‘Resident Evil’ (2002)
Paul W.S. Anderson’s original “Resident Evil” wasn’t a particularly faithful adaptation of the game, but it functions rather well in its own right. Milla Jovovich plays Alice, an amnesiac who gradually discovers her connection to a mysterious high-tech laboratory hidden underneath a giant manor house. A group of soldiers arrives when an accident unleashes a zombie virus, and soon they’re all shooting the undead science nerds, jump-kicking zombie dogs, and all other kinds of outlandish nonsense. The movies got a lot bigger, and a lot better (at least, better at being outlandish nonsense), but the original “Resident Evil” holds up, if you can forgive it for taking so many liberties with the material.
8. ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ (2010)
By the fourth film in the “Resident Evil” series Alice has an army of superpowered clones, promptly loses her entire army of superpowered clones, and then spends the rest of the film in a zombie-infested prison with “Prison Break” star Wentworth Miller and Ali Larter, who also rules. Anderson knows how to film zombie violence and suped up action movie malarky with an emphasis on scale and, at odd times, beauty. “Afterlife” isn’t the best in the series but it’s the one where Anderson found his mojo, which served him even better in the fifth, even more absurd entry.
7. ‘Until Dawn’ (2025)
The “Until Dawn” video game was essentially an interactive movie, featuring prominent actors like Rami Malek and Peter Stormare, telling a familiar but effective story about teens trapped in a house, attacked by a masked killer and then eventually supernatural monsters. David F. Sandberg’s movie version throws most of that away in favor of a new premise, in which a group of teens get trapped at a house where a mysterious clock forces them to relive the same night, over and over, where they’re killed by different monsters every time. A nifty idea, excitingly filmed, and Sandberg seems to be having a great time making lots of mini-horror movies about whichever monster he was into at the time. It doesn’t mean a damn thing, unfortunately, and it never feels like more than a hollow genre exercise. Meh. There are worse sins.
6. ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ (2012)
By the the fifth film the “Resident Evil” movies had evolved, or possibly devolved, into absolute, 100% pure hokum. But if you can get on their wavelength, “Retribution” is a fun time at the movies. This time around Alice gets stuck in an impossibly huge facility where the Umbrella Corporation plays out their zombie experiments, cloning characters from the franchise who died ages ago, and giving Anderson an excuse to do literally anything he wants, the confines of reality or plausibility be damned. The “Resident Evil” movies don’t get sillier, or much better, than this.
5. ‘It Came from the Desert’ (2017)
Marko Mäkilaakso’s mostly unknown adaptation of the mostly forgotten 1989 video game “It Came from the Desert” is a wonderful discovery. A welcome throwback to b-movies of yore with amusing characters, cool motorcycle stunts, bizarre monsters and a strong sense of humor. The film is about two teenagers, one a cool biker and the other his nerdy mechanic, as they party in the desert and run afoul of giant, radioactive ants. It’s a lo-fi production and the cast is a mixed bag, to say the least, but Mäkilaakso makes the most of it, and at its best the film has some real “Tremors” vibes. (Or at least the underrated “Tremors” sequels.) A delightful low-budget monster mash, dents and all.
4. ‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ (2007)
Third time’s the charm! While many of the “Resident Evil” movies are fun in their own zany way, Russell Mulcahy’s “Resident Evil: Extinction” works as a (mostly) standalone film, with Milla Jovovich’s Alice escorting a party of zombie apocalypse survivors through the wastelands of Las Vegas and the Mojave desert, fighting the undead and fending off swarms of zombie crows. “Extinction” is, compared to the other movies, just serious enough to be taken seriously. Not that any of it matters or means much, but the characters are drawn well-enough that we give a damn about them, and the action is badass and easy to follow (a huge improvement from the previous film, “Apocalypse”). For now, the “Resident Evil” movies don’t get any better than this.
3. ‘Detention’ (2019)
John Hsu’s award-winning adaptation of the 2017 point-and-click video game “Detention” is the most serious video game horror movie to date, telling a spooky tale about teenagers trapped at their school in the middle of the night, trying to figure out why it’s haunted by ghosts and demons. The story takes place in the 1960s, a time of martial law, when Taiwanese students had a secret, banned book club that led to suspicion, betrayal, and tragic death. Horror-wise, “Detention” is very similar to other haunted house horror movies, but the depth of the tale and its political significance make it feel like more than just a scary story. It’s a potent, disturbing film.
2. ‘Dead Rising: Watchtower’ (2015)
The second best horror movie based on a video game is, believe it or not, a Crackle Original. Yes, really. Based on the hit video games about a reporter stuck in a zombie outbreak, improvising weapons to survive, “Dead Rising: Watchtower” stars Jesse Metcalfe as a different but similar reporter, also stuck in a zombie outbreak, who improvises weapons to survive. Okay, admittedly that’s weird, but “Watchtower” works surprisingly well. The action and gore are frenetic and thrilling, the characters are energized and interesting, the plot expands to introduce new threats without getting convoluted, and the humor lands. It’s a bigger production than you’re probably expecting, and a satisfying watch all around.
1. ‘Werewolves Within’ (2021)
Josh Ruben’s “Werewolves Within” is the only live-action video game horror movie we can completely recommend, without any caveats whatsoever. Based on a V.R. game, which was in turn based on a popular party game, the film stars Sam Richardson as a disarmingly nice forest ranger who moves to a small town, instantly falls for the lovely and funny local postal worker (Milana Vayntraub), and meets the host of other, bizarre characters who live there. Then there’s a big snowstorm, the power goes out all over town, and they start getting killed by a werewolf, one by one. Great characters, a fantastic ensemble cast, witty writing that warrants comparison to the comedy classic “Clue.” It’s not an especially terrifying movie, but it’s a splendid horror comedy, one of the very best video game adaptations ever, and well worth howling about.
