The Best-Reviewed Video Game Movies, Ranked. The New Number One Opens Tomorrow, and the Billion-Dollar Ones Are Nowhere Near the Top.

The review embargo on Zach Cregger's Resident Evil lifted Tuesday, and by Wednesday afternoon the film sat at 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across 91 reviews. That is not just the best score a Resident Evil movie has ever had. It is the best score any movie adapted from a video game has ever had, period. It opens tomorrow, September 18, with previews tonight.

We covered what to expect from the film itself last week: the $80 million budget, the missing Leon and Alice, the jokes Cregger cut after test screenings. This is a different piece. It is a ranked list of the video game movies critics have actually liked, and a look at the strange rule that governs the genre: the films critics love make almost no money, and the films that make a billion dollars get some of the worst reviews of the year.

The rule: critics and audiences shop in different stores

Start with this year. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opened April 1 and has grossed $1.013 billion worldwide, the second-biggest video game film ever behind its own predecessor. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 42 percent from 225 critics, with a Metacritic of 37. Audiences gave it an 87 percent Popcornmeter and an A-minus CinemaScore. Critics and ticket buyers were not watching the same movie.

That is the pattern, not the exception. A Minecraft Movie did $955 million on a 47 percent. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opened to $64 million last December on a 16 percent critic score and an 83 percent audience score, a 72-point gap that Rotten Tomatoes confirmed as the largest critic-versus-audience split in the site's history. Meanwhile the film that held the genre's critical record for three years, Werewolves Within, grossed $991,898. Not million. Under a million dollars, total, worldwide.

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The ten best-reviewed video game movies, ranked

Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes critic score as of September 17. The newest scores are still moving as reviews land, and the older ones can drift a point as late reviews are added, but the order has been stable for a while.

1. ***Resident Evil (2026), 97 percent.* Cregger's original story set on the night of the Raccoon City outbreak, with Austin Abrams as a medical courier who picked the wrong hospital. 90 minutes, rated R. Opens tomorrow.
2. ***Exit 8 (2025), 91 percent.* Genki Kawamura's Japanese adaptation of the indie liminal-space walking game. It premiered in the Cannes Midnight section, NEON released it in the U.S. on April 10, and for five months it held the record Cregger just broke.
3. ***Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), 86 percent.* The first major studio video game movie to be Certified Fresh, and the only film on this list that is also a hit: $492.2 million worldwide, two helpings of Jim Carrey, and Keanu Reeves as Shadow.
4. ***Werewolves Within (2021), 86 percent.* A whodunit horror comedy from a Ubisoft VR party game almost nobody played, released by IFC Films to under a million dollars. Still the funniest film in the genre.
5. ***The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), 72 percent.* Yes, really. The sequel to the phone game movie is better reviewed than every Mario, Pokémon, and Mortal Kombat film ever made.
6. ***Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), 69 percent.* Idris Elba as Knuckles did a lot of the lifting.
7. ***Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019), 68 percent.* Ryan Reynolds voicing a furry noir detective was the moment the genre stopped being embarrassing.
8. ***Mortal Kombat II (2026), 68 percent.* Opened May 8 to $38.5 million domestic, the best critic score of any live-action Mortal Kombat, and a 90 percent audience score. It then stalled at $129 million worldwide on an $80 million budget.
9. ***Gran Turismo (2023), 65 percent.* Neill Blomkamp's true story of a gamer turned racing driver, and the rare video game movie that is technically a sports biopic.
10. ***Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), 64 percent.* The one where the internet made Paramount redesign the character's teeth, which turned out to be the best marketing money the studio never spent.

Where the famous ones landed

The Super Mario Bros. Movie sits at 59 percent, Mortal Kombat (2021) at 55, Tomb Raider (2018) at 52, Until Dawn (2025) at 51, A Minecraft Movie at 47, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie at 42. The 2017 finale of the Milla Jovovich Resident Evil series, The Final Chapter, closed that run at 39 percent. Cregger's film beat it by 58 points.

Why this weekend is the real test

Look at the list again and notice what is missing: a film at the top that also made serious money. Exit 8 was an arthouse release. Werewolves Within barely opened. Sonic 3 is the closest thing the genre has to a critical and commercial success in the same movie, and it did that with a PG rating and a Christmas release.

Resident Evil is trying to do it with an R rating, an original screenplay, and no recognizable characters. Deadline's projection is a $35 million opening, which would clear the franchise's 24-year domestic record (Afterlife's $26.6 million in 2010) by a wide margin, and other trackers have it higher. If a 97 percent horror film from the Weapons director opens above $35 million on an $80 million budget, the genre finally has a data point where the critics' pick and the audience's pick are the same movie. Every dormant survival-horror license in Hollywood is watching.

What is coming for the list next

• ***Street Fighter, October 16.* Kitao Sakurai (Bad Trip) directs Andrew Koji as Ryu, Noah Centineo as Ken, Callina Liang as Chun-Li, Jason Momoa as Blanka, and David Dastmalchian as M. Bison. Paramount released a second trailer on September 2.
• ***Sonic the Hedgehog 4, March 19, 2027.* The franchise that currently owns the only critic-and-audience double on this list gets a fourth try.
• ***The Legend of Zelda, April 30, 2027.* Wes Ball's live-action film for Sony and Nintendo, with Bo Bragason as Zelda and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link. The biggest swing in the pipeline.
• **A Minecraft Movie sequel, July 2027.** Expect the 47 percent to be irrelevant to the opening weekend, again.

Rank them yourself

Video game movies are one of the few genres where a personal ranking will genuinely disagree with both the critics and the box office, which makes them ideal for a tier list. Add the ten films above plus the two Marios and Minecraft to Shortlist, rank them head to head using our tier list method, and see whether your S tier looks like Rotten Tomatoes or like a billion-dollar opening weekend. Then go see Resident Evil this weekend and drop it in. Our bet is that it lands near the top of yours too, and if you want the horror comparison, the Halloween franchise makes a good sparring partner. Need a starting point? Our list maker builds one in a minute.

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