17 Years Later, Resident Evil Director’s ‘Worse Than Waterboarding’ Movie is Now on Prime Video

Before Zach Cregger became the horror wunderkind behind Barbarian, Weapons, and 2026’s Resident Evil, he directed a movie so savagely reviewed that one critic suggested it as an alternative to waterboarding. Seventeen years after its theatrical release, Miss March is available through Prime Video’s digital storefront in supported markets, giving viewers a chance to revisit Cregger’s infamous 2009 directorial debut.

Note that Prime Video currently lists the R-rated comedy for rental or purchase in the U.S. Streaming availability varies by country. The timing could hardly be more amusing. Cregger’s Resident Evil arrived in theaters on September 18, 2026, extending an extraordinary career reinvention that began with Barbarian. Yet Miss March remains the ungainly artifact at the other end of his résume, a movie sitting at 5% on Rotten Tomatoes and a remarkably meager 7/100 on Metacritic.

Miss March Was Eviscerated by Critics in 2009

Credit: Searchlight Pictures

Zach Cregger co-directed, co-wrote, and starred in Miss March alongside his late The Whitest Kids U’ Know collaborator Trevor Moore. Cregger plays Eugene, who wakes from a four-year coma to discover that his former girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) has become a Playboy centerfold. Tucker (Moore) promptly drags him on a cross-country pilgrimage to the Playboy Mansion. Craig Robinson and Hugh Hefner also appear.

Critics did not merely dislike the result; some practically reached for a flamethrower. James Berardinelli’s ReelViews review supplied the barb behind the headline. After declaring the comedy irredeemably bad, he wrote:

Waterboarding is an interrogation technique in which a restrained person has water poured over a cloth covering the nose and mouth, restricting airflow and producing the sensation of drowning and suffocation. It became notorious for its use by the CIA against detainees after 9/11; a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee summary later described CIA waterboarding as physically harmful and documented detainees suffering convulsions and vomiting. Berardinelli’s line was, of course, grotesque hyperbole rather than a literal comparison.

Nathan Rabin was scarcely kinder at The A.V. Club. He argued that Robinson was “all that stands between Miss March and complete worthlessness,” while describing the movie as “misanthropic, smutty, and smug.” The fusillade continued elsewhere. The Los Angeles Times called it a “monumentally stupid anti-comedy” and concluded that even a 15-year-old would find it a chore. Metacritic now records 15 negative reviews, zero mixed, and zero positive, while The Hollywood Reporter awarded it a brutal 10/100 (via Metacritic).

Its ignominy survived the calendar year. Rotten Tomatoes’ 2009 critics roundup included Claudia Puig choosing Miss March as her worst film of the year, while The A.V. Club later noted that it had become Metacritic’s worst-reviewed movie of 2009.

Zach Cregger’s Career Took an Audacious Detour

Credit:- Sony Pictures Releasing

What makes Miss March fascinating 17 years later is not some belated critical vindication. It is the filmmaker Cregger became afterward. Even before release, Cregger and Moore knew their first feature represented unfamiliar terrain. Cregger explained that they had inherited the basic coma-and-Playboy premise before substantially rewriting it. 

Moore admitted (via Duclarion) they “weren’t wild” about making a road-trip sex comedy for their first movie, but the freedom to rework it persuaded them. The pair also knew feature filmmaking demanded different muscles from sketch comedy. In a contemporary Brian Orndorf interview, they discussed building an R-rated movie around the abrasive comic instincts that had powered The Whitest Kids U’ Know. Cregger later remained critical of the finished film, even as Moore was more willing to defend its uneven charms. 

Then came the volte-face. Barbarian transformed Cregger into a serious horror commodity in 2022, Weapons cemented that reputation, and Sony entrusted him with Resident Evil, released September 18, 2026. The latter stars Austin Abrams and sends an original protagonist into Cregger’s version of Raccoon City. That trajectory is precisely why Miss March is worth excavating today. Prime Video viewers can now judge Cregger’s notorious starting point for themselves, preferably without resorting to Berardinelli’s proposed interrogation method.

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