Zach Cregger has made a Resident Evil film with almost nothing to do with Resident Evil. The trailer, out today, suggests he’s fine with that.

There is no Leon. No Jill. No Chris. No Wesker shimmering through a doorway in a long black coat. The Spencer Mansion is nowhere. The Raccoon City Police Department, that deranged civic art museum where so much of the franchise’s iconography lives, is absent. What you get instead is Austin Abrams, playing a medical courier called Bryan, walking through deep snow up to a dark and empty house. He needs to use the phone. His car is wrecked. Things, he tells his girlfriend on the line, have happened.

“Some things have happened.” Sony is selling Cregger off Barbarian and Weapons, and you can see why. The man knows how to seed dread in a domestic interior and let the audience squirm. The trailer’s opening minute could be a deleted scene from either of those films. Then the carnage starts.

Bodies fall from the sky and burst on the road. Zombies in various states of decomposition lurch through the white. There is a creature, briefly glimpsed, that can only be described as resembling Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen from the Villeneuve Dune films. Bloated, monstrous, wrong in some way the eye cannot quite parse. If that design holds up in the finished film it would be the first time a live action Resident Evil has produced a monster image worth putting on a poster.

Cregger has been candid in interviews. The script is original. It has nothing to do with the previous six films. He has not even seen most of them. He wanted to make his own horror picture and the brand came afterwards. Whether that is a betrayal or a relief depends on which corner of the fanbase you sit in.

Here is the honest read. The Resident Evil films have been creatively bankrupt for over twenty years. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Milla Jovovich cycle was a slick, increasingly stupid pulp engine. Welcome to Raccoon City was a museum piece that loved the games so much it forgot to be a film. Cregger going the other way, treating the brand as a sandbox rather than a sacred text, might actually be the most respectful thing anyone has done with this franchise in a generation.

The courier hook is also smarter than it sounds. Bryan moves between hospitals carrying organs in cold storage. He is already a man who lives among biohazards and sterile rooms. When the world tips, he has the right toolkit and the wrong nerves. That is good horror writing. Whether Cregger and Shay Hatten can sustain it across two hours is another question.

The Capcom calendar adds pressure. Requiem sold five million copies in five days and has reportedly cleared seven million within two months. The franchise is in one of its hottest commercial moments ever.

Nothing in the trailer resembles any Resident Evil film made before it. Given the track record, that’s probably the whole point. Cregger has compared the film’s tone to Evil Dead 2, which may be the key. Raimi’s film doesn’t separate horror from comedy. They’re the same current running through the same wire, and Raimi simply controls the voltage. If Cregger has that control, September 18 is worth showing up for, even if you may have to call the film something other than Resident Evil.

Featured Photo: Vertigo Entertainment; Playstation Productions

Author Bio

As a freelance journalist, Ryan Smith’s work is driven by a commitment to restoring what has long been absent from institutions meant to uphold truth and accountability: honesty and transparency. Alongside his analysis works on the life, career, trials and tribulations of Michael Jackson, whose unfair treatment over the years paved the way for the path he is on, Smith also dissects and examines popular culture, such as books, movies and video games, always aiming to shed light on what’s beneath the surface.