Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil and Resident Evil 7 fill the same role in their larger franchises
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil and Resident Evil 7 fill the same role in their larger franchises
Sometimes the most accurate adaptation is an indirect one
“Interesting…”
That word, spoken by Bryan, the protagonist of Zach Cregger’s new Resident Evil movie, uses very little to sum up a lot. We won’t spoil the details here, but suffice to say, this one-word reaction is in response to a situation that is completely bizarre, disgusting, and potentially game-changing for the Resident Evil franchise, not to mention Bryan’s life as he knew it. Like so much of the movie, this line provides such understatement in the face of over-the-top threats that it walks right up to the line of self-parody, but instead of crossing it, the film decides to sit in that deeply uncomfortable spot for as long as it can.
Horror and comedy both need core authenticity to function. Things are scary because they feel real, and likewise, things are usually funny because they’re true. But for the Resident Evil franchise, both the games and the films, any feeling of being grounded in any recognizable truth or semblance of reality, was lost for years. For the games, it was Resident Evil 6 (which was technically the 7th game in the franchise’s main story) where things went too off the rails for even loyal fans to stick with it. And likewise, it was the 7th live action Resident Evil movie, titled Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City, that finally pushed the teetering film series off the ledge, too overstuffed to feel believable, and too unoriginal to offer any real surprises.
It makes sense then that in order to reboot and re-center on the core principles that define Resident Evil, both the games and movies needed to throw out everything that came before them and do something new. After seeing the film, which had been criticized by some fans for not sticking closely enough to the source material, it became clear to us that Cregger’s movie is more like Resident Evil 7 than pretty much any other movie out there. While the film doesn’t directly adapt any of the game’s story or lore, it uses almost the exact same tools to fix the exact same problems.
Disposable, untethered leading med
Both Resident Evil 7 and Cregger’s Resident Evil star fresh faces to the franchise. They have no combat training, no interest in fighting monsters, and no real reason to be caught up in the horrors that surround them. Ethan Winters from RE7 is looking for his missing wife. Bryan from Cregger’s film is trying to make money while promising to come home soon to his girlfriend.
Unlike Jill Valentine or Leon S. Kennedy, the fan base wouldn’t revolt if either of them were taken out permanently, so the stakes for each of them are immediately higher. From the start, we know they may die, or worse, which makes them more human, more like us. Also, neither of them have physical characteristics or backstories that are too specific. Because we don’t know much about them, they could be anyone. And so the less we know about them, the more we see them as an extension of ourselves.
An evolving, unknown horror
Cregger’s Resident Evil shares surface level connective tissue with the games and prior films. Racoon City is a central location. There are typewriters and health sprays lying around, and dead people too, though unlike the typewriters, they occasionally get up and try to kill someone. But ultimately, it’s mostly fan service. At its heart, Cregger’s film is not like any of the films or games that came before it. It does its own thing, just like Resident Evil 7 did when it was first released.
It finally feels safe (from spoilers, anyway) to talk about it, it's been almost ten years since its initial launch, but Resident Evil 7 is secretly about people infected with an ancient, contagious mold with incredible powers. Among other things, it can take your average family and turn them into immortal cannibals that think it’s important to feel rotten, human meat to strangers. This was a very new kind of monster problem for the series, and gaming in general, hedging closer to Texas Chainsaw Massacre than Night of the Living Dead (or anything in Resident Evil 1-6 or Code Veronica). As a result, RE7 made it easy for us to think about how much we don’t know about what horrors are just around the corner, and how unprepared we are to deal with them.
Likewise, as revealed in the “interesting” twist we talked about at the top of this post, the genetic aberrations driving the outbreak in Cregger’s Resident Evil don’t follow the rules of any other zombie or infected creature from the games or movies. But like in RE7, the film’s infected sometimes retain pieces of their humanity while their bodies grow monstrous. That may seem like a good thing, because maybe you can reason with them, right? But that potential for a rational, kind solution just makes things more stressful. There’s little tension in the choice to shoot a mindless zombie in the head. It’s always the right thing to do. But there’s no easy choices when you’re looking at sick person who might just need some form of experimental therapy (like an internal mold removal bath or T-Virus cleansing agent) in order to feel normal again, but who may also try to kill you at any moment.
Maybe we’re the ones who are really sick
On a more meta level, everything that Cregger’s Resident Evil and Capcom’s Resident Evil 7 share in common come together to address a question that most people who play horror games, watch horror movies, or (checks notes) are alive and aware of their place in the world around them in the year of our lord 2026. And that question is - “What’s wrong with me?” Or more specifically, “Why did I put myself in this incredibly awful situation?” With Bryan, his mix of blissful ignorance, unearned confidence, and aimless ambition lead him to bite off more than he can chew. With Ethan, his search for his wife, who says to him plainly in the opening moments of the game “STAY AWAY!”, is what draws him in. But of course, he goes in anyway, just like Bryan drives off into the dark, snow covered roads with no chains on his tires. Their stories wouldn’t be horror if they didn’t.
It’s this detachment from fear and absence of dread that allows players and viewers to have those experiences in their place. And also, their total lack of self-preservation instincts, married to their resignation to a terrible fate, makes the pair all the more relatable. Who hasn’t gotten up in the morning in this era of constant garbage on our phones, wars and atrocities on the global stage, and who knows what polluting our skies and water supplies and thought “Here we go again”. When the terrible becomes our everyday life, the everyman living a terrible life becomes our avatar.
So you may look at Ethan and Bryan and think they are nothing special, but take one look at their moment to moment choices and you’ll see that there is something terribly wrong with both of these dudes, making them the perfect tools to help us work through our own fears and traumas.