Resident Evil Is Finally Adapting The Basics Of Survival Horror
Count your bullets and save your herbs.
After redefining the horror genre in the ‘90s, the Resident Evil franchise went through a radical gameplay evolution. The original game was iconic for its jarring and uncanny camerawork, punishing resource management, and intentionally unwieldy controls: almost everything about it was designed to be as oppositional to the player as the Spencer House itself. It’s an ethos that was honed to a fine point with the next installment, Resident Evil 2, which upped the scale but maintained the desperate circumstances and high-anxiety level of challenge.
But in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and especially in Resident Evil 4, the series started to shift away from its intense, horror-centric approach. Jumpscares, monstrosities, and resource management all stuck around to a degree, but the gameplay became a lot closer to a traditional third-person shooter, a design choice that critics thought reached its limits with Resident Evil 6. Since then, the franchise has returned to its origins with RE7, Village, and Requiem, while on the cinematic side, the upcoming reboot is finally emphasizing the true survival-horror experience after decades of those elements being largely ignored on film.
In a new behind-the-scenes featurette for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil film, the director discusses his approach to reimagining the franchise. He once again emphasizes the importance of horror to the franchise as a whole, specifically the slow-building dread that’s so potent in the first few games. He also discusses the central idea driving his take on the material, namely wanting to explore how much more overwhelming the outbreak in Raccoon City would be from the perspective of a regular guy unfamiliar with guns and not trained for high-stress situations, unlike the former cops and special agents who frequently serve as the game’s leads.
Everything Cregger says in the video feels in line with the direction of the more horror-oriented games, particularly the original game and RE7: being forced to creep down a long pitch-black hallway, banking all your hopes on two shotgun shells, knowing all the while that something horrific is in your way. It’s all accentuated by footage of Austin Abrams’ protagonist Bryan bumbling his way through Raccoon City, trying desperately (and hilariously) to acclimate himself to firearms and running from all manner of bio-engineered nightmares. There’s even a glimpse at what looks like a “first-person” sequence, with the camera staring down the sights of a double-barreled shotgun as Bryan moves through a darkened house.
The first-person sequences and civilian protagonist feel like a love letter to RE7 and its hapless hero, Ethan Winters.
After 20 years of Resident Evil being presented through the lens of action onscreen courtesy of Paul W.S. Anderson’s films and the 2021 action-horror reboot Welcome to Raccoon City, it’s refreshing to hear a filmmaker talk about going back to the atmosphere that defined the franchise in the same way that RE7 did: by following an Average Joe who ends up fighting for his life. While it’s not a direct adaptation of the games, there’s a strong possibility that Resident Evil might be the adaptation that comes the closest to replicating the feeling of playing the source material when it arrives later this year.
