The actor is on the brink of his biggest roles yet, in Resident Evil and Whalefall.

PHOTOGRAPHY Emman Montalvan&nbsp;
STYLED BY Mark Holmes for Fendi&nbsp;
Austin Abrams is on the edge. Not literally—although he is barefoot and cross-legged at the front of a sofa for most of our Zoom call—but metaphorically, given the stakes of this moment in his acting career. When we speak in late August, he’s just a few days shy of his 30th birthday. It’s a big milestone for anyone, but this one carries a little extra narrative weight: it marks his 15th year as a working actor and coincides with two major film releases:&nbsp;Resident Evil and Whalefall.
The two films represent a significant shift from the supporting roles he’s taken on in projects like Weapons and Euphoria, as well as the romantic leads he’s played in Chemical Hearts and Dash &amp; Lily. Now, Resident Evil and Whalefall will feature Abrams as the number one on the call sheet—the head honcho, the above-the-fold star. Calling it a major moment feels like shortchanging its potential. If the movies succeed, they could be career-altering for an actor who has already spent almost two decades working in Hollywood. And yet Abrams is as tranquil about it all as the zen-like pose he adopts for the majority of our call. “I’m just going day by day with it,” he says of the calm before the storm. “But I feel pretty good.”

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He’s got a lot to feel good about. In theaters September 18, Resident Evil marks a reunion with writer-director Zach Cregger, who, alongside contemporaries like Jordan Peele, has quickly cemented himself in Hollywood through a commitment to boldly original horror with Barbarian and Weapons. Horror, much like the zombies at the heart of Resident Evil, has a habit of coming back to life just when you count it out. That’s been particularly true over the last decade, and perhaps nowhere more so than this year, with the releases of Backrooms and Obsession. Cregger was ahead of the curve: Barbarian cost roughly $4 million to make and went on to gross more than ten times that amount, finishing its global box office run at $46 million in 2022. There’s a case to be made that the film helped open the door for studios to take bigger risks on smaller-budget projects like Backrooms and Obsession.
Resident Evil, however, is not an original property. Based on the hugely successful video game series of the same name, it isn’t even the first live-action movie to bear the title—that distinction belongs to Milla Jovovich’s six-film run, which were released from 2002 to 2016. Yet under Cregger’s direction, this Resident Evil feels wholly unique. The director has described the film as heavily inspired by 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, that all-killer, no-filler chase movie whose propulsive momentum doesn’t let up until the credits roll. Cregger’s Resident Evil channels the atmosphere, tone, and feel of the games while centering on Bryan, a medical courier played by Abrams, who’s simply trying to deliver a package to the infamous Raccoon City. Fans of the game series know that nothing good happens there—and that it’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and Bryan is caught up in the middle of it. Survival quickly becomes the goal.
For Abrams, acting was always the goal. Growing up in Sarasota, Florida, he attended a theater camp that left an immediate and lasting impression. “I was pretty settled on acting at a young age,” he says. “I remember thinking, I need to do this for the rest of my life, which was a pretty intense thought at that time.”

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That same clarity of conviction helped set the stage for an exciting creative partnership with Cregger. Abrams had seen Barbarian and immediately recognized it as the kind of bold, original filmmaking that’s increasingly difficult to find in Hollywood. He told his agents he needed to meet Cregger, who just so happened to have a script with a character Abrams might be right for. “It doesn’t usually happen like that,” says Abrams. “I mean, there’s a million things that you watch, and you’re like, Oh, I really like that person. And then it’s just like, Yeah, okay. But they maybe don’t have anything going on, or they don’t even know about you or whatever.”
What made Weapons feel so exceptional was its segmented narrative, with each chapter functioning as an interlocking yet distinct story focused on a different character—all while striking a deft balance between horror and comedy. Abrams’s segment follows a junkie who stumbles into solving the film’s biggest mystery: What happened to a classroom full of elementary school students who abruptly disappeared in the middle of the night? “The situation he’s in, to me, is kind of funny,” he says. “He’s just this addict who is looking out for himself, but he found all these kids that the whole town is looking for and now he wants the reward money.”
Clearly, Cregger and Abrams aligned. The Abrams portion of Weapons is Looney Tunes–esque in its madcap structure, and far and away the film’s most comedic stretch. Resident Evil seems to carry that sensibility forward; in the trailer, Abrams’s character fumbles around a house searching for shotgun shells after spotting a zombie slowly descending on him from a comically distant vantage point. As he scrambles to get his act together, the editing makes clear that he’s taking far, far longer than he should. It’s one of many scenes that warranted a conversation between director and actor. “It’s like, Is this too much or is this not enough? Do we want this moment to not be as funny? It’s feeling-based,” he says. Even in his portrayal of a junkie, Abrams finds a genuine vulnerability in his character, something that has emerged throughout much of his recent work. One of the best moments in Wolfs, the Apple TV film he made with Brad Pitt and George Clooney, features Abrams delivering a particularly emotional monologue. Raw and sincere without tipping into saccharine, the speech instantly wins you over to his character.

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Abrams felt he and Cregger had built a strong working relationship on&nbsp;Weapons, but Resident Evil took it to another level. “There’s more trust, and definitely more of a shorthand,” he says. “The most nourishing part of the work was the collaboration of coming up with things on the fly and listening to each other’s ideas. My favorite thing is being able to throw a bunch of things at [Cregger] when he’s so competent and is able to understand what’s going to work for his movie and what isn’t … I’d love to work with him for a long time. I have such a good time working with him, and I love his work.”
Whalefall, meanwhile, is garnering plenty of attention for its splashy, high-concept premise ahead of its October 16 theatrical release. Abrams plays Jay, a young diver who is swallowed by a whale while searching for the remains of his father. Based on Daniel Kraus’s 2023 novel of the same name, the story is, as NPR’s Up First podcast put it, a “deep meditation on fathers, sons, and loss”—a somewhat unexpected counterpoint to the meme-like identity the film has already taken on across social media.
Abrams will also reunite with his Weapons costar Josh Brolin, who plays his father in the film. Both Resident Evil and Whalefall leave Abrams largely on his own for extended sequences, a setup that can make the acting process more demanding. “You’re trying to figure out how to do storytelling when you’re alone,” he tells me. “How can you convey something to the audience without needing to say anything? Or [by deciding] to say something. Gauging those things and becoming the generator yourself. It definitely ends up upping your imagination because you don’t have another person to work off of.”

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That kind of work requires a certain vulnerability, which can be daunting—especially for a performer who is intensely private, an increasing rarity in an industry where social media followings can sometimes serve as a deciding factor for which actors get considered for roles. To this day, Abrams has no social media presence and remains reserved in the press. But that reserve doesn’t extend to his work. “I don’t look to hold on anything when I’m working,” he clarifies. “You’ve got to go for it and take the hit if it doesn’t work out. That’s how people are going to resonate with it: if you are fully open and giving yourself to it.”
Yet for all the roles he’s taken on, there’s still a part of Abrams that’s searching for ways to get better, to give more of himself to his work. Toward the end of our conversation, I read him a long quote from a 2013 interview he did for Gangster Squad, where he was asked which pop-culture icon he’d want to be for a day. He jokingly interrupts with his present-day answer: “Daffy Duck!” Back then, though, he chose The Beatles. He admired how, as their careers grew, the band members kept pushing themselves toward something better. It’s striking to hear the answer from a young actor who, at the end of the day, was simply trying to improve his craft. Asked if he still feels that way, the answer is a resounding yes: “I feel like that’s what we’re trying to do.” He goes on to talk about how The Beatles took risks, forged their own paths, and trusted themselves to keep doing their own thing.
This is the wager Abrams is making. “These are the opportunities that are interesting, that you’re drawn to, and that seem meaningful to you,” he says. By betting on himself and choosing projects on his own terms, Abrams is positioning himself to define the next 15 years of his career and then some. How’s that for living on the edge?

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GROOMING: Simone Kogen CREATIVE CONSULTANT: Emily Adar PRODUCED BY: Paula Neves and Tyler Scott DIGITAL TECH: Andrew Ngu PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Patrick Molina and Evan Duran

Austin Abrams Is Betting on Himself

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