14 Nightmarish Resident Evil Monsters

Resident Evil is the most famous horror video game franchise and is still going strong nearly twenty-five years after it debuted back in 1996.

After many sequels and spin-offs, you’d think there was a danger the scares would have grown stale as the audience becomes inured to Resident Evil’s particular brand of b-movie inspired body-horror, but reinvention is something that Resident Evil has excelled at, showing an ability to change with the times while many of its survival-horror rivals stagnated.

Which isn’t to say the franchise hasn’t had its missteps; anyone who’s laboured through Resident Evil 0 will attest to that. It’s a series that has been darn right silly - gloriously so at points - and us fans love it for that too. But the series has had something of a reset in recent releases, largely stepping away from the overblown excess and convoluted lore, in favour of a more stripped-down return to horror.

So, for this list we’re going to focus on the nastiest monsters that Umbrella and its many subsidiaries have created, the grotesque things that shamble through those eerie abandoned mansions and ruins of Raccoon City.

Normally, Resident Evil is at its least imaginative when it resorts to monsters that are overgrown animals. Resident Evil 0 felt like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at points, such was its love of pitting you against super-sized centipedes, bats, scorpions, and frogs to name just a few.

However, the giant spiders are an exception due to their unsettling execution, sure to set off any arachnophobes.

First appearing in the original Resident Evil, the monster was introduced outside of a cut-scene - which is always more terrifying, giving the player less time to prepare for the new threat. The spiders were made even more skin-crawling in that game's remake, the extra fidelity making each bristly hair grossly visible.

Thankfully, it’s been some time since a new game featured this monster - but given Resi’s fondness for giving its classic critters cameos, they’re probably overdue a comeback. Maybe we’ll get to see what a next-gen giant spider looks like in RE8.