Zach Cregger's Resident Evil | Non-Spoiler/Spoiler Discussion Thread

Joem1k

Joem1k

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Bryan, a medical courier, is in the process of making a delivery to Raccoon City General hospital when an outbreak forces him to fight for survival
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Figured why the hell not, and get a thread going for this because it's coming out soon and there's a lot of positive/mixed buzz going around for it!


Though the main consistent gripe i'm seeing be tossed around is the third act is a very mileage may vary part of the film, including the ending. Which is par for the course with any RE story in the games so i'm not too surprised on that front.

I'm even seeing some people saying Zach and Austin are the Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell horror creative duo of this generation which is quite a insane comparison to hear being tossed around, but seeing some the interviews with these two interacting, and some of the BTS stories they've told, i can't help but see it a bit, these two really gel well with each other!

So if anyone here gets to see it, here's a thread for ya! :D
 
Being a Resident Evil fan, I’m quite skeptical, but will watch when it hits digital. I’m checking out Zach’s previous films Barbarian and Weapons right now. I haven’t watched a good horror film since The Substance. So we’ll see.
 
Kain said:
Being a Resident Evil fan, I’m quite skeptical, but will watch when it hits digital. I’m checking out Zach’s previous films Barbarian and Weapons right now. I haven’t watched a good horror film since The Substance. So we’ll see.
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Barbarian is good, Weapons are great. Really looking forward to his Resident Evil, but will probably be able to watch it only in like a week or so.
 
Got to watch the film and this is all i have to say, can we please get Zach Cregger and Austin Abrams for a Evil Dead film? These two are a perfect match for it! If not, i'll happily take what i got with this, this was a blast of a film, third act's a bit of a mileage may vary affair but that's par for the course with any RE story in the games, i think the comedy could've been pulled back a hair bit to let the emotional beats/stakes breathe but despite that main gripe, this felt like on par tone wise with classic Evil Dead 100%.

Getting past the evil dead comparisons, i thought Zach and his crew really nailed the feel of the game mechanics/structure, it really felt like i was watching someone play a Resident Evil game all the way through, everything was there from the resource management, the progression with the weapons, how the main lead acted and how they started to step up towards the end of the story, the camera angles and how they followed the character and where you can tell where it transitions from cut scene to gameplay mode. it all felt perfectly on par with the games in a way that i've never seen done with any other video game adaptation that's gonna lend to some really fun re-watches.


But yeah, it was a blast and i highly recommend it if you love the games and how they play out, you will not be disappointed on that front!
 
That's great to hear. I wish they had conveyed elements from the games in the trailers. That would have eased fan trepidation.
 
I think that Resident Evil was fantastic.

There are some obvious comparisons to be made to Evil Dead, specifically to Evil Dead II, but both movies are still different enough to make it interesting, mostly when it comes to the mix of horror and comedy. Evil Dead's horror comes from the fact that the Evil Forces themselves have a sense of humor. That they want to mess with you and drive you mad before you die. In Resident Evil, the biohazard itself doesn't have a sense of humor or even personality, but it can mutate into such grotesque forms that at one point you just have to laugh at it. The various mutations of the virus are very true to the games, but while the games treat that completely straight (which also works), in the movie it usually devolves into "I don't know how to react to this, so I'm just gonna laugh". Which is also very Evil Dead, but again, different enough to make it interesting.

There are also some visual nods to other great horror movies like The Thing, Frank Darabont's the Mist, or From Dusk Till Dawn. By the end of the movie I was also getting some Alex Winter's Freaked vibes.

It's interesting that while Evil Dead Rise had themes of fearing motherhood, Resident Evil has themes of fearing fatherhood. Though ultimately I think the movie is about avoiding responsibility, which I found quite interesting. The protagonist avoids responsibility of dealing with the fact that his girlfriend might be pregnant by taking one last package to Racoon City. Then he meets the Umbrella agent who avoids responsibility by sending him for the car keys. Then when shit hits the fan in the lab, the guy from Severance starts sending all of his colleagues to their deaths to get the cure. It's not only about avoiding personal responsibility, but also corporate responsibility that leads to destroying of the planet, which is why I think the nihilistic ending of the movie is so fitting. Even though the protagonist wants to do the right thing by the end, he becomes the product of everybody around him avoiding responsibility and destroying the world. It also kind of reminded me the ending of Return of the Living Dead. Where no matter what you do, the situation will just keep getting worse.

One thing bothered me, though. The movie was shot in Prague. There are tons of Czech names in the credits and the farmer at the start of the film was even played by a pretty well known Czech actor (Karen Dobrý, who was also in the first Mission: Impossible movie). And when I first heard that the movie is being shot in Prague, it made sense to me because the Resident Evil series is full of gothic mansions and even the RCPD looks like something from Gotham City. So I though they're gonna use some locations from pre-war parts of Prague to get this late 19th to early 20th century look. But instead the movie takes place in like Soviet era city blocks that were built in the 1970s that do not exist anywhere in the US and it doesn't really make sense for any American city to have them.

Though I'd love to hear an American's perspective on this, whether it felt to them as jarring as it did to me.
 
Honestly the architecture to me at least added to the grimy nature of this Raccoon City that Zach wanted to portray with the story he wanted to tell, i didn't mind it at all nor did it take me out of the experience as it was in line with the films overall bleak aesthetic and tone.
 
Re: the architecture, it felt VERY accurate to RE2 and 3s version if Raccoon City. Way too cramped, alleys that lead nowhere, dumpsters everywhere. Raccoon City's design has never made sense as a North American city.
 
IAmWillGibson said:
Re: the architecture, it felt VERY accurate to RE2 and 3s version if Raccoon City. Way too cramped, alleys that lead nowhere, dumpsters everywhere. Raccoon City's design has never made sense as a North American city.
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Fair enough. It's true that a Japanese studio made it, so it makes sense if it was always supposed to look a little off.
 
I recently watched the new Resident Evil movie with my cousin and his girlfriend, and I gotta say, I dont know how anybody could hate this movie, and I will even go as far as to say that its the best Resident Evil, and Ive played every game other than the revelations titles, and some spinoffs, so I can talk on this, and so did my cousins girlfriend. My cousin was there also, and hes played a few. This movie is perfect, and I think that most of the complaints are so easily disputed. "Resident evil shouldnt have comedy" Resident Evil 1s voice acting was unintentionally bad and funny, but many of the parts within the game are meant to be cheesy and campy, which was expanded by resi4, and reached its peak in resi7s splatstick gorefest where you are the fourth stooge, and peaked the peak in resi8, which is ridiculous, but still good, in fact, the movie has most out of the way comedy because it makes sense for people to act like this, its the rare instance where stupidity in a horror movie makes sense, like Evil Dead 2013 and Alien. Another complaint is that it strayed too far, with new designs and no legacy characters. Resident Evil 2 og, Resident Evil 7, I dont need to say anymore. The ending I hated at first, but now I love it for its pure tragedy, shock, and memorability factor, it's up there with Night Of The Living Dead. overall 100/10 movie, 10/10 adaptation, please watch it if you haven't. If you can, watch it in theaters
 
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