Resident Evil Director Explains How the Movie Fits With the Games, Despite Those Obvious Inconsistencies
Zach Cregger became a horror superstar thanks to Barbarian and Weapons, two films that turned original ideas into some of the genre’s biggest recent commercial and critical hits. That track record earned him the keys to Resident Evil, one of the most valuable horror properties in any medium. Rather than adapting a specific installment of Capcom’s survival horror franchise, Cregger opted to build an original narrative following Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who becomes trapped in Raccoon City as it descends into chaos during the evening of the T-Virus outbreak. Because early marketing suggested the film unfolds during the same night as Resident Evil 2, fans scanning the trailers noticed details that appeared to clash with that specific timeframe, sparking online debate over exactly where the movie fits.
“I am not doing exactly a Resident Evil 2 one-for-one adaptation,” Cregger said during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. “It doesn’t take place in the 1990s, which is when Resident Evil 2 came out. And it does take place in the snow. It takes place in the snow, in 2026; that’s why he [Bryan] has an iPhone.” Cregger also explains why these changes were added to the movie, as he “took liberties to tell the story I wanted to tell and to make the movie look the way I wanted it to look.” However, even though the movie bends the franchise’s timeline, Cregger is determined to make a movie that’s faithful to everything fans love about the Resident Evil games.
Resident Evil Still Has a Lot of the Games Put Into It
Despite the liberties Cregger has taken with the timeline, the marketing for Resident Evil signals the director’s familiarity with the source material. Trailers have highlighted classic enemy types pulled directly from Capcom’s games, alongside background details like typewriters and shotgun shells tucked into drawers, staples of the early entries in the franchise. Beyond these visual callbacks, the overall structure mirrors the rhythm of the games themselves, built around scarcity and tension rather than constant action. After all, Bryan, an organ courier with no combat training, must improvise his way through an unfolding nightmare as the T-Virus overtakes Raccoon City around him.
“I love that it’s not survival action, it’s survival horror,” Cregger explained during a preview event ComicBook attended. “And it’s like this slow, creeping dread where you progress from set piece to set piece, and you always feel like you have maybe just enough to survive.” That description directly addresses one of the biggest criticisms lobbed at the franchise’s previous cinematic outings, including 2021’s critically panned Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which leaned heavily on action spectacle rather than dread. Cregger further clarified how his story coexists within established canon without contradicting it, noting that the film takes place “in the world of Raccoon City, on the eve of the outbreak, and playing by the rules where the Umbrella Corporation, the T-Virus, and all those things are there, but this story just kind of happens, you know, over here.”
Resident Evil is scheduled to be released in theaters on September 18th.
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