I am actually really excited for Zach Cregger’s upcoming Resident Evil film, I think this may be the best chance there is for getting an actually good adaptation, mostly thanks to the fact that Cregger seems like a super fan who actually understands what makes the games so charming. In other words: he knows ball.
“I want fans of the games to just know that I am a giant fan of the games, I am making this movie to celebrate the games—I haven’t seen the other movies,” Zach Creggers says during an interview with ScreenRant. “What I’m not doing in this is that I’m not going to cannibalise the characters and the stories that the games already do so well, because I’m not going to be able to improve on Leon. I feel like Leon exists in the games and anyone I cast and any haircut I give him or any line of dialogue I make him say it’s just not going to be Leon because Leon exists.
“I feel like what I’d rather do is tell an original story that lives in the world of the games, that obeys the rules of the games largely, but feels like more of the experience you get when you’re playing the games. That’s leaning into the survival horror aspect of it—it’s not survival action, it’s survival horror.
As someone who has indeed watched the WS Anderson Resident Evil films this is actually a really good explanation of what the dividing line between a good and a bad resi film is. A film which embodies the survival action side of Resident Evil is incredibly hard, perhaps even impossible, to do well.