Sony Pictures is ready to get the party started at this year’s CinemaCon with a panel that’s bound to get cinephiles excited about the studio’s upcoming releases, including my most anticipated title from the lineup: Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. Try as they might, Hollywood can’t get the Resident Evil formula right, whether it’s the diminishing returns of Paul W.S. Anderson’s film series, mediocre animated films, a subpar television series, or whatever the hell 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was supposed to be. It’s time to reset the board and give one of horror’s most promising new filmmakers a chance to inject some new life into the zombie-killing franchise.
Resident Evil at CinemaCon
During Sony’s panel, the studio welcomed Cregger to the stage. He says he’s obsessed with the video game series and considers them “a great standard for survival horror.” He wanted to remain faithful to the games, essentially pairing us with a single protagonist for an on-foot journey from Point A to Point B.
Later, the lucky crowd got to see the first trailer for Resident Evil. Our Editor-in-Chief, Chris Bumbray, says the trailer is “nuts!” As Austin Abrams travels, he collects resources while on the run. The scale is much larger than the Paul W.S. Anderson movies. Abrams looks like a great protagonist, just being a normal guy who wants to get home. The film looks a lot like the games and feels propulsive in a way that other Resident Evil films do not. It’s nothing like Barbarian or Weapons—no narrative acrobatics. Hell yeah!
What’s Cregger’s Resident Evil about?
Cregger wrote the screenplay with Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead), and the story apparently harkens back to the original Capcom game’s horror roots. Here’s the supposed logline: Bryan, a laid-back organ courier, is sent on a late-night delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. En route through a snowy mountain road, he accidentally hits a strange woman with his car. She survives—but something is very wrong. As he tries to help, Bryan stumbles into a full-blown outbreak involving horrifying tentacle-based mutations and bio-engineered monstrosities.
Weapons cast member Austin Abrams takes the lead role and is joined by Paul Walter Hauser (Cobra Kai), Zach Cherry (Severance), Johnno Wilson (I Love That for You), and Kali Reis (True Detective). Cherry is said to be playing a scientist at a hospital, and Reis will play an ex-military character originally written for a male actor.
Cregger on his Resident Evil being a non-stop thriller ride
Cregger, a big fan of the Resident Evil video games who has never watched any of the previous movies, has said, “It’s gonna be not at all like Barbarian and Weapons. It’s going to be a rock ’em, sock ’em… it’s for me to play. And turn my brain off and just make an… Evil Dead II… get crazy with the camera. … It’s a weird, fun, wild story. This movie follows a person from point A to point B. It’s like a real time journey, where you just go deeper and deeper into the depths of Hell.” The studio gave Cregger carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the property.
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