20 Horror Films Where Humans Are The Real Monsters

12. Resident Evil (2002)

Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil franchise was never exactly peak cinema, and it got worse as it went on, but 24 years on, his first instalment has enough sheen, excitement, gore, and horror to make it worth returning to.

Departing from the video games’ protagonists, we follow new character Alice (Milla Jovovich), an amnesiac with special abilities, who discovers she is part of an effort to guard the Hive, an underground, Umbrella Corporation-owned genetic research facility whose AI – the Red Queen – has apparently turned lethal. Naturally, all is not as it seems. Inside the facility, the genetically engineered T-virus has been leaked and turned the staff into zombies, which Alice and her commando squad must fight through in order to secure and contain the outbreak.

There is no shortage of monsters and villains in Resident Evil, with the Red Queen and monstrous Lickers seeming particularly sinister. But the cause of these is the real monstrosity: the big bad of the whole franchise, the Umbrella Corporation. We don't have more than a passing encounter with the people themselves, but they are responsible for the experiments within the facility, the creation of the virus itself, and its inevitable release – and that’s to say nothing of what they do with the results in the aftermath. 

Here, humans very much are the real monsters, and they all wear shirts, ties, hazmat suits, and masks, well hidden behind the corporate façade.