He’s Scrawny. He’s Pathetic. He’s Hollywood’s Hottest New Breakout.

Wide Angle A New Scream King Has Arrived Resident Evil star Austin Abrams plays a pitch-perfect pitiful loser. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Nadira Goffe? Sept 28, 20262:09 PM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Mariia Demchenko/Getty Images Plus and Sony Pictures. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Move over, scream queens, because a king is coming for the crown of favorite horror darling. After his scene-stealing performance in Zach Cregger’s runaway hit Weapons as James (the fan-favorite drug addict), Austin Abrams is back on the big screen in yet another Cregger banger, Resident Evil—and the people are loving it, with the new movie breaking records for the video game franchise at the box office. More specifically, the people are loving Abrams, who stars as Bryan, a medical courier undergoing what has to be the worst shift of his life. Much like Weapons’ James, Bryan is this hapless, scrawny dude who simply can’t catch a break as he unwittingly makes his way into the heart of an outbreak of monstrous mutants, which seems to be exactly what audiences love about him. Cregger mentioned that he wanted to make Resident Evil feel more grounded than its predecessors by, for starters, casting a lead actor who’s not “hot.” Welp, that backfired, and now outlets are publishing lists of other Abrams projects currently available on streaming, doing deep dives on his earlier roles, and catering to a digital fanbase that is (understandably) increasingly Hot for Abrams. Still, to Cregger’s point, the adoration of Abrams proves that there has been a shift from the iconography of “the movie star” that we’re used to (if movie stars even exist today, which is a question no one can seem to agree on), if a pitiful loser (said with affection) like Abrams’ Bryan can become the internet’s latest object of obsession. But longtime fans of Abrams won’t be shocked; as anyone familiar with his work knows, it was only a matter of time before he would emerge as a beloved Hollywood starlet. My history with Abrams goes back a whole decade. While I found Paper Towns, the 2015 film adaptation of the 2008 YA novel by John Green, to be a pretty lackluster adaptation of a defining book of my adolescence, I remember being charmed by Abrams as Ben, the goofy loverboy best friend to the story’s protagonist. This was in direct contrast to Abrams’ other work in 2015–2016, in the fifth and sixth seasons of the long-running zombie apocalypse series The Walking Dead, in which Abrams played Ron, a resident of a town of survivors called Alexandria. When we’re first introduced to Ron, he is merely a teen who suffers from his father’s physical abuse, but when the series’ protagonist, Rick, has a hand in his violent father’s death, Ron becomes radicalized against Rick. Later on in his arc, Ron becomes the culprit of one of the show’s most memorable and shell-shocking climaxes. Abrams would show up again on my screen in 2019, when he became more widely known for his turn as a character’s love interest in HBO’s hit teen drama Euphoria. From there, Abrams would capture the hearts of even more as the misanthropic love interest Dash, in the holiday romantic comedy series Dash & Lily, before again following up with a turn as the villain in the (surprisingly very good) 2022 teen black comedy Do Revenge. Clearly, Abrams spent years showing his versatility (and, occasionally, his shirtless body) by playing, to put it politely, a little shit whom everyone loves to hate, or the young guy you can’t help but have a fondness for. Though several of the projects he was in were high-profile, they didn’t necessarily translate to larger success. Maybe there just wasn’t much cohesion among the audience demographics of Dash & Lily and Euphoria (unless, of course, you’re someone like me). But everything changed for Abrams with Weapons. This is where Abrams would go on to cement his shtick as the dude who is endlessly put through the wringer, but whose charming strain of patheticism wholly wins over an audience. James, his character, plays a pivotal role in solving the film’s central mystery about what happened to a missing classroom of children, but he does it with a natural comedic timing and delightfulness that quickly alters any preconceived notions a viewer might have about what an unhoused young addict might offer the story. Not only is the film sympathetic to James, but Abrams is just someone who naturally inspires compassion. Despite all of James’ faults—and there are many—Abrams excels at playing that particular kind of guy who, even with all of his shortcomings and your misgivings, you continue to root for. Resident Evil marks Abrams’ second project with Cregger, cementing him as a kind of muse for the ascendant filmmaker. There are personal reasons for this—when the 2023 Hollywood strikes created major scheduling conflicts for Weapons’ original cast, Abrams was the only member of that cast that stayed with the film—and stylistic ones. Abrams’ onscreen talents fit Cregger’s specific flavor of horror, which is more humorous and lively than upsettingly dark. The aspects that make Abrams shine as a side character in Weapons are the same ones that let him really enthrall you as the protagonist of Resident Evil. He’s charming; he’s situationally funny; he’s relatable; he’s really, really bad at surviving, but he doesn’t stop trying. You could watch him deal with getting the shit end of the stick for hours on end. Perhaps it’s the beginning of a typecast for Abrams, because his next film premiering later this year is Whalefall, in which he’ll play a scuba diver who is swallowed alive by a sperm whale. On top of being a captivating, versatile actor, Abrams also typifies the prevailing aesthetic preferences of a younger generation. In an era where Gen Z’s particular type isn’t only the Glen Powells of Hollywood, but also the actors who may be described as consumption chic—think Timothée Chalamet and Josh O’Connor, the kinds of skinny, derelict-looking weird guys with a light curl to their hair—it’s unsurprising that Cregger has proved to be way off about not casting a hot lead. We were all there in 2024 when Gen Z defined the Hot Rodent Boyfriend, male celebrities who are considered attractive despite looking, as the internet claims, a little rodent-esque. Abrams’ most ardent fans don’t just admire him; they want to be impregnated by him, or, in a better illustration of online thirst these days, they want to defy biology and impregnate him. Abrams has become the star of too many sexually explicit fantasies to meme; at this point, he is mere minutes away from having to do one of those Buzzfeed Thirst Tweet videos. (Upon discussing Whalefall, my editor joked: “I’m already anticipating the tweets: ‘I’d love to swallow him in my mouth, too,’ etc.”) So let this be a refreshing example that things can change with time. What constitutes proper Hollywood Guy Material is ever evolving. It’s just my luck that the career of one of my favorite actors, whom the world hadn’t properly acknowledged for years, is getting a deserved jumpstart as a result. One thing that I hope won’t change, though, is the abject misfortune of the characters Abrams plays. Here’s to all of his future unlucky punks—I can’t wait to meet you. Celebrities Movies TV Horror