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The Resident Evil movie reboot has finally arrived, coming from one of the biggest names in horror these days, filmmaker Zach Cregger, who previously wowed fans with his films Barbarian and Weapons. And he certainly seems to be off to a good start with Resident Evil — we gave it an 8 out of 10 here at IGN, it’s in the 90s on both the Rotten Tomatoes critics and audience scores, and it’s on track to be a winner at the box office as well.
IGN’s own Tom Jorgensen recently sat down with Cregger and the film’s star Austin Abrams — who plays Bryan, a medical courier with some serious bad luck — to discuss the divided fan response to the film before it came out, how Cregger and his team went about evoking a true “video game feel” with the reboot, how Abrams almost got killed by a 150-pound bag of blood during production (!), and much more.
You can watch the discussion at the video above, or read it all right here…
Tom Jorgensen for IGN: There is a little bit of a conversation going on about this movie about to what degree it’s staying faithful to the games.
Zach Cregger: A little bit of a conversation?
IGN: A tiny, little bit of a conversation.
ZC: Wow. Okay. That’s putting it lightly.
IGN: Have there been unexpected challenges in convincing people this is the way to do this?
ZC: Yeah. I mean, of course. I think I was naive when I… I thought that fans of these games like me would be thrilled that somebody was coming along and turning Resident Evil into a survival horror movie. And I was like, “That’s great.” I did not really appreciate the sentiment [of] “We’ve been waiting forever for Leon’s story.” And I appreciate that. And I’m sorry that that’s not the story that I’m bringing here. I mean, I get it. I understand the frustration.
I understand it so well because I haven’t seen the earlier movies, because they don’t look like the Resident Evil that I love. You know what I mean? So how could I be frustrated with fans who have that same attitude? My only hope is that they will see the movie regardless of their skepticism or their disappointment that I’m not telling some of the stories that the games tell so well, and that they will feel seen when they do watch the movie and they will recognize all of the love for the games that is in this movie because it is there. And this is not just me telling a story and slapping Resident Evil on it so I can get a budget. This is me telling a Resident Evil story. I understand the resistance. I really do, because I have it myself. But it is coming from a true place of love.
IGN: I think historically video game adaptations have really struggled to translate the active experience of playing a video game into more of a passive experience [of] watching a film. How did that inform your choice to lean a little bit away from the specifics of exactly what happens in the Resident Evil games and more into how it feels to play them?
ZC: Well, there’s a lot of answers to that question. The first thing that comes to mind is the camera work. I’m using the language of the games in the camera work. So I’m staying rooted in that third-person, over the shoulder with a big wide lens [style], which is how all of these games are. That’s their language. And so that was a really fun thing, is to just almost one-to-one the visual language of the games in there.
And then to utilize the pacing of the games, the survival horror, the dread, the journey on foot where you’re entering this terrifying scenario, and you have two shotgun shells and you’re wounded. And that is such a fun, loaded, cinematic element that the games have done so well since the beginning, but the movies don’t really seem to be concerned with. And so I wanted to make a survival horror movie and pick up on all those things. I utilize the setting and the t-Virus and the Umbrella Corporation, all of those little ingredients that make Resident Evil, Resident Evil – that’s the bedrock of this movie as well. Another aspect [is] the length of the games, like weapon progression, starting with a pistol, graduating to the shotgun, graduating to the MP5. The increasingly dangerous enemies and mutants that you encounter.
Austin Abrams: The language, too, that you were talking about, just the camera and the angles of figuring out that dance, especially if it is over the shoulder or something of where to move and have the [camera] operator… We’re moving around and we’re doing a lot of things in one take. So getting that choreography right, but also doing it in a way that feels…
ZC: Spontaneous, yeah…
AA: …fresh and dynamic, was just another aspect to it that was tricky to do.
IGN: What conversations were you having with your DP and your camera department on this? Was it important that they have experienced and played the games, or were these conversations that you were able to have more on set just practically speaking in terms of how to achieve that look?
ZC: No, I don’t need my camera department to have played the games. I’m the captain of what we see, so I’m going to make sure that we have the right lens and that we are moving correctly. So no, that’s on me. They need to make sure it’s lit well, but I’m the boss of how it moves and what lens is picked.
James is our camera operator who came straight from The Odyssey, where he was lugging that giant IMAX thing around. And so now he had a normal-size camera and he was able to be really agile with it. I think he felt really liberated. And he’s played video games because most people in our age [group] and younger have grown up on video games. So we all fundamentally understand the visual language of these games. And so it was a fun challenge for him to anticipate his attention and get there in time and tag these data points together. It was a really cool thing and it feels game-like.
AA: And I’ll say that’s why I felt comfortable going into it, because I knew that [Zach] was so passionate about it and had played so many hours of it. So he really knew the language of the games, and so that he could really be the captain. And I mean he really was … being very clear with everyone like, “No, this is what needs to happen and this is what needs to happen.”
I think [he was] really protecting the games in that way and protecting especially how you feel while you’re playing the games. … If it was someone else that wasn’t as much of a fan, that wasn’t as passionate about the games, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable.
IGN: You mentioned in our breakdown of the first trailer that there’s only two or three scenes in this movie that are really leaning into zombies or vanilla zombies. Why was that important to you for this movie to not really focus on zombies?
ZC: It’s not that that was not important. As I was writing the story, it’s just the story. I’m a big fan of letting the story tell itself to me, and this is the way the story naturally unfolded. I think I maybe shouldn’t have said that, because I think there are more scenes than I mentioned that have zombies. I didn’t expect people to really grab onto that as a bad thing. You don’t know what the other things are, so how can you get mad at this yet? The t-Virus is more interesting than just zombies. You know what I mean? The t-Virus can do all sorts of fascinating things with organic matter. So why would I not utilize that as much as possible? So I’m surprised that I have as many scenes as I do where zombies are just zombies.
IGN: Austin, you’re playing a character original to this world. You’re getting to start from scratch on that. Was that freeing for you, knowing that you didn’t have to live up to some specific expectation from the game?
AA: Yeah, definitely … because it makes it so that you can go any direction. So we could really just come up with whatever was feeling right, and what felt also the most interesting to watch. I feel like a more interesting person to watch go through this experience is someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing, and also just wants the best almost for everyone and is a good-hearted person that then has to face all of these horrors. To me, [that] felt like a fun thing to watch.
IGN: Were there any other horror movie performances that you looked to for inspiration and how to build Brian and how capable he is in this world?
AA: I’m not sure. There wasn’t necessarily horror movie inspirations, but there was… I think we found as we were going that there were character inspirations. And we’ve talked about this, but one being Marty McFly a little bit, and then Kevin McCallister and then John McClane…
IGN: The holy trifecta.
ZC: Opposite ends of the spectrum.
AA: …and oscillating between the three of those guys. So that did become an inspiration. But I wouldn’t say earlier on that there was necessarily a horror movie inspiration. But definitely more in the vein of the person that is just ill-equipped to deal with it, which just makes it more fun I think for everyone.
IGN: Because your previous films have messed a little bit with narrative structure and moved things around a little bit, what new challenges as a director did you run into in maintaining one thread of momentum right through to the end? And then, Austin, how do you support that in your performance? How do you shoulder all that momentum?
ZC: I mean the answer’s in the question, right? It’s like, is it possible to make a movie that is adrenalized for 85% of the movie? There are a couple of moments of little lulls here and there, but really, this movie is like tension, release, tension, release, tension, release. Can you stick with that for the runtime? That is a unique challenge. Weapons or Barbarian have their moments, but they also have all these story-building lulls in there that I love. But this movie, the goal in the challenge was “Let’s floor it and let’s never stop flooring it.” And that was hard. Hard on you.
AA: Yeah. Well, and the aspect of that too is keeping in mind like, “Okay, where am I right now in this journey? Am I starting to get a little bit more comfortable maybe with the weapons or am I…” Because you’re having all these reactions to these crazy things, and it’s just doing your best to make them all feel unique, but also feel like there’s a progression here, especially when it’s like, “Okay, well I’ve been surprised by a ton of monsters,” so it’s like, “Can we do this in a new way or is it still hitting me in the same way, or am I a little bit more used to it now?”
ZC: You have to be cognizant that you’re not just doing the same thing over and over. We need to build an arc into it. And that’s hard when everything that keeps happening is like level 10. But, I think he did.
IGN: My favorite story that I have heard from the set of this film so far is that during the zombies off the roof scene, Austin, you were nearly taken out by a 150-pound bag of blood, I believe. Did you clock that in the moment as you were running or was that like a, “Hey, you got to come to playback and check something out, dude.”
AA: I remember running and then being like, “Oh, whoa, that was close.” But I kept to my line and thankfully there weren’t any slips or anything like that. And then afterwards people being like, “Oh dude, that was…”
ZC: I remember bringing him to the monitor and being like, “Watch this.”
ZC: And it’s in the movie.
IGN: Can either of you remember the first time in your life that you really truly had the shit scared out of you by a video game?
AA: I feel like I was playing Dead Space, I think. I remember that just really… I think I tried playing it, and I just couldn’t make it through it actually. Yeah, it just really freaked me out.
ZC: Not the first time, but the most effective was Resident Evil 8. I played in VR, and that baby in the basement. It actually scared me so bad I had to stop. And I don’t think I’ve ever noped out of anything as an adult, but that did it. … In VR, dude, it was too intense.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
