The first trailer for Resident Evil has finally clawed its way online after an early debut at CinemaCon, and it looks like this franchise is heading into some seriously intense and scary territory.
Directed by Zach Cregger, the filmmaker behind Weapons, this new take ditches familiar storylines from the games and starts fresh with an original narrative set in the nightmare-soaked streets of Raccoon City.
Right from the start, the footage pulls you into a cold, uneasy setup. A man trudges through the snow toward a silent house, knocks, gets nothing, and lets himself in anyway. “Hello?” he calls out. “I had a little bit of a problem on the road, I was wondering if I could use your phone?”
That guy is Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, who recently appeared in Weapons. According to the official synopsis, he’s “a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.” That chaos shows up fast and doesn’t let up.
Once Bryan gets access to a phone, things take a more personal turn. “Hey, babe. I’m sorry that we got disconnected earlier, but some things have, uh, happened,” he says. “I’m, like, in a seriously messed-up situation right now, and it looks like we might not get to talk to each other again. I just wanted you to know, I love you.”
From there, the trailer spirals into pure survival horror. There’s a chilling dial tone humming under scenes of Bryan sprinting through snow, desperately trying to grab keys from a corpse that suddenly isn’t so lifeless.
He crashes into a sewer system and comes face-to-face with something bloated and grotesque. Limbs twitch on their own. Bodies drop from buildings. A hospital sequence adds another layer of nightmare fuel that longtime fans will appreciate.
The cast backing Abrams includes Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, and Zach Cherry, but we don’t see them in the trailer.
What makes this reboot especially interesting is how Cregger is approaching the world of Resident Evil. Instead of retelling or reworking established characters, he’s carving out something new while still respecting what came before. As he explained:
“I never wanted to tell the story of any of the characters from the games. Leon exists in the games. I don’t want anyone to ruin that for me. I don’t think that me telling a story that’s not about Leon is a violation of the Resident Evil world, because the games do that all the time.
“Leon’s not in 7 or 8. So I figure if I am honoring the games, I’m just going to tell another story that feels like playing in the world of the game, but I’m not stepping on the toes of any of Leon’s storyline.
“I’m not recasting Leon, god forbid. You know, I’m letting Leon stay Leon. And I feel like that’s the most respectful thing I could do.”
That approach might be exactly what this series needs. Instead of retreading familiar ground, it builds a new nightmare inside a world fans already know is dangerous, and I’m excited to experience the bloody madness!
Resident Evil hits theaters on September 18, and if this trailer is any indication, it’s going to be a rough night in Raccoon City.
