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You probably wouldn’t be thinking about Umbrella Corporation if you found yourself running for your life through the outskirts of Raccoon City.
With no briefing, no weapons cache, and no idea what’s happening around you, the lore isn’t going to be your top priority. You’re not searching for Leon Kennedy, you’re looking for a door that locks, a weapon that works and a way to make it through the night.
At least, that seems to be what Zach Cregger’s new Resident Evil movie is pitching in its first teaser trailer.
It’s our first proper look at Cregger’s take on the long-running survival horror franchise. Directed by the filmmaker behind Barbarian and Weapons, the new Resident Evil stars Austin Abrams as Bryan, a medical courier who finds himself caught in one very bad night of escalating chaos.
The film also stars Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser, with Cregger co-writing the script alongside Shay Hatten. It’s being billed as a “thrilling and terrifying reinvention” of the franchise, and based on the teaser, that reinvention sits far away from the obvious franchise markers.
There’s no Leon Kennedy. No Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine or Ada Wong. No big Umbrella logo reveal. No clear RPD nostalgia play. Instead, the teaser follows one ordinary bloke being dragged into something much larger than himself, with barely enough time to understand what’s happening before the next horrible thing arrives.
It’s a bold strategy for a franchise up to its knees in lore across multiple films, video games, reboots and more.
So rather than retelling one of the games, Cregger’s story exists on the edge of them. Abrams’ Bryan is not walking into the outbreak as a trained operative with a mission. Ridiculously unequipped for the job. He’s closer to what would happen if any of us found ourselves in the middle of an outbreak: close enough to the disaster to be swallowed by it, but not close enough to understand the bigger picture.
For some fans, that’s already a problem. The early reaction to the trailer has been split, with plenty of viewers asking why a Resident Evil film would lead with so few familiar markers from the games. But we reckon that’s where Cregger’s making the right move.
The teaser captures the feeling of the games rather than the lore that shapes them. Survival horror isn’t just a monster in a hallway. Or the evil corporation that created it. It’s having too little ammo, too little time and no clear escape. It’s opening the wrong door because the right one is locked.
Of course, this is only the first teaser. Cregger and Sony may well be holding back the more obvious Resident Evil connections for later trailers, whether that means Umbrella, familiar locations, recognisable creatures or some other piece of franchise DNA. What matters here is what they have chosen to lead with, and that is not nostalgia. It is panic.
A good horror trailer is one thing. A good Resident Evil movie has to carry some of that specific grime, dread and weirdness. But if Cregger can make us feel the dread that comes with locked doors, wrong turns and a horrible sense that the disaster is much bigger than one person, this smaller story might be exactly the right way back in.
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