Director Zach Cregger was in Prague shooting the upcoming “Resident Evil” movies when “Weapons” was released in 2025. He was troubleshooting on set and missed out on the fanfare.“Weapons” was a critical and box-office success that earned 75- year-old Amy Madigan the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Prior to that, he did “Barbarian” with Bill Skarsgård in 2022. That film put him on the map as someone to watch for in the horror genre.
Cregger loves the video game so much, he actually went to Constantin Films to ask if he could do a Resident Evil movie.
At the Directors on Directing Panel sponsored by Collider at this year’s San Diego Comic Con, he said, “I have been a fan for a really, really long time. I loved 2, I played the hell out of 4 many, many times, and I think 7, 8, and 9 are absolutely fantastic. I still play it a lot.”
Despite this, Cregger had not seen any of the previous Resident Evil movies. For this one, he wants to capture the feeling he gets when he plays the game. He won’t be using any of the games’ main characters like Leon Kennedy.
“I didn’t get a story from the game because I’m not going to do better than the games do,” Cregger said.
This story, set in Raccoon City, is based on the perspective of Bryan, a medical courier who somewhat reluctantly takes on a job that eventually gets him face to face with mutated creatures, infected beings, and inhospitable conditions as the night devolves around him.
Cregger says, “I like the slow creeping dread, the idea of one person moving on their feet from point A to point B and entering a gauntlet as they go deeper and deeper into hell... you feel like you do not have the resources to survive this but you have to figure out how to make it through.”
I’m assuming that slow, creeping dread won’t last too long on screen as he also says in several interviews, “I put my foot on the gas pedal and I don’t let up until the end of the movie.”
He also uses the words, “completely unrelenting” to describe the pace of the film that clocks in at just over an hour and half.
Playing Bryan is Austin Abrams from “Weapons.” Cregger admits to putting Abrams through a lot: “Austin is walking down the street... there are tall buildings on either side, he sees a zombie on top of this building, the zombie jumps and explodes on this bus station and just dies.” Other zombies start jumping off and “detonating” (Cregger’s word) all around him.
“I didn’t want to use VFX, I wanted to use as many practical detonations as possible because that was going to make it look tangible and real.”
They used cranes, “human sacks,” lots of liquid blood, and they had to dress the street with snow and get the timing of these jumping zombies right.
“Austin had to run at consistent speed, we had to have a camera in a truck following him real close, if he tripped, they would have run him over and killed him,” Cregger rather casually says. He also adds they were dropping the 150-pound zombies from a height of six stories. One actually didn’t drop at the exact time, landing an inch away from Austin.
Despite the close calls on set, the two were very excited to talk about the film at an event hosted by Discord, where they dressed up an outdoor event and food truck space to look like Raccoon City with fake snow falling in the middle of summer in Southern California.
“Resident Evil” is set for a Sept. 16 release at cinemas and Imax theaters. Tickets are already on sale. Fans can visit the Resident Evil activation at SuperManila Comic Con this weekend.
