The Best Resident Evil Adaptation Came Out Years Before The Game

In the 30 years since the original Resident Evil terrorized unsuspecting gamers as they explored the sinister Spencer mansion, there have been multiple failed attempts to bring that singular vision of horror to life on-screen. Paul W.S. Anderson’s movie series that ran between 2002 and 2017, 2021’s Welcome to Raccoon City from Primate director Johannes Roberts, and a misaligned CW-esque teen drama from Netflix in 2022 all fell well short of the source material, and even Zach Cregger’s upcoming reboot is fighting an uphill battle to win fans over, as it’s also departing from the game’s narrative.

But the failings of previous adaptations can’t be blamed on a refusal to straightforwardly adapt the story when the problem is really one of tone and atmosphere. Anderson’s films were obvious relics of Hollywood’s obsession with replicating The Matrix, Welcome to Raccoon City feels like an action-horror film in the vein of Aliens, and the less said about the Netflix show, the better. Every live-action project bearing the franchise’s name has missed the mark in terms of replicating the feeling of the games, which means that the best version is actually another video game-linked film that predates the original Resident Evil, and that served as an early outing for a Japanese filmmaker who would go on to become a contemporary master of horror.

It might feel like cheating to call Sweet Home a Resident Evil “adaptation,” since it shares its story with a game released seven years before Resident Evil revolutionized horror in 1996. But what Anderson, Roberts, and Netflix missed in their attempts was that, before the franchise became a sprawling zombie-contagion saga, the original game was, first and foremost, a haunted-house story. The Spencer mansion, with its Gothic architecture and generational secrets, feels more akin to Wuthering Heights or Shirley Jackson’s Hill House than the dilapidated farmhouse from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Even the zombies are just one of many grotesque horrors players encounter while investigating, and the fact that they’re reanimated corpses doesn’t feel that far off from the ghosts present in most gothic media.

Sweet Home echoes that haunted atmosphere, and was a major inspiration for the mood of Resident Evil. Both versions of the story (the game and film were developed simultaneously) follow a documentary crew as they investigate the secrets of the Mamiya house, a destitute manor once owned by a famous painter whose wife succumbed to insanity and murdered several children after the accidental demise of their toddler. Much of the film’s horror comes from watching our characters uncover tragic relics, like a casket or an illuminating diary entry, and slowly piece together what unfolded in the house.

That method of storytelling is found in both Sweet Home’s game adaptation and the original Resident Evil, and there’s even connective tissue in the catalyst for both stories. The wretched presence of Lady Mamiya, a ghost whose corrupting influence stems from desperation and sadness, feels remarkably similar to Lisa Trevor, added in the 2002 GameCube remake of Resident Evil and forever cursed to wander the Spencer Mansion’s halls as the T-Virus’ Patient Zero.

Aside from the atmosphere, it’s impossible to watch Sweet Home knowing what it influenced and not think about the grotesque fates of Resident Evil’s Bravo Team. While the human zombies are the game’s centerpiece, Bravo’s ill-fated members meet some uniquely gruesome fates: pecked dead by crows, swallowed whole by a giant mutated snake, devoured by infected dogs. Likewise, the members of the documentary crew are slowly picked off in a variety of nightmarish ways; one character is bisected by living shadows, and another is melted down to just a skeleton. There’s no zombie virus, but the film still echoes Resident Evil in that both houses are filled with supernatural dangers ready to prey on unsuspecting visitors.

And unlike most actual adaptations of Resident Evil, Sweet Home captures an element that’s become crucial to the gaming experience over time: the brief, fleeting moments of humor. Most of the comedy is the unintentional result of the game showing its age, but there’s something disarming about the aloofness of Chris and Jill exploring the mansion while unaware of what’s going on. That sort of comedic irony weighs heavily on the first half of Sweet Home, with our happy-go-lucky documentarians goofing around, completely unaware of the terror that awaits them.

Although director Kiyoshi Kurosawa would go on to direct far more notable horror films (Cure and Pulse being the most well-known), Sweet Home was a first glimpse at the creeping dread that would become characteristic of his work. That feeling is present throughout the entirety of Resident Evil; it’s not an overwhelming swarm of zombies that makes the first game so scary 30 years later, but the fear that something awful is about to happen and that there’s nothing you can do about it but continue onwards.

Part of what makes Kurosawa such a beloved horror filmmaker is how well he weaponizes that feeling: from the very beginning, watching our unaware protagonists first enter the Mamiya house, you’re acutely aware that destiny is urging them on to bear witness to something horrific. Sweet Home isn’t the best unofficial adaptation of Resident Evil because it inspired the first game, but because it’s so in tune with the aura of doom that permeates every room of the Spencer mansion.

Sweet Home is available on the Internet Archive.