Get ready to reload. The official trailer for Zach Cregger’s highly anticipated Resident Evil adaptation has finally landed, offering a fast-paced, gore-soaked peek at a survival-horror ride packed with T-virus mutations and classic Capcom Easter eggs.
The trailer centers on Austin Abrams (Weapons) as Bryan, an unsuspecting medical courier caught in a catastrophic, non-stop fight for survival as a single, horrifying night spirals into total bio-organic chaos. Cregger (Barbarian) directs from a screenplay he co-wrote alongside action scribe Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 4).
Less Zombies, More “Weird Creature Stuff”
While the initial teaser keeps its focus tightly on Bryan’s frantic arrival amid the outbreak, horror fans expecting a standard horde of the walking dead might want to adjust their expectations. Cregger revealed that the film intentionally sidesteps traditional zombie tropes in favor of the franchise’s wilder bio-weapons:
“This movie doesn’t utilize zombies that much. It’s much more focused on the weird creature stuff than the zombies. There’s really only two scenes, maybe three, where there’s proper zombie stuff going on. And two of those three are in the trailer…
I wouldn’t call this a zombie movie. I just feel like you have this opportunity for the T-Virus to do all these really fascinating things to the human body, and to the world around you, so to just limit it to zombies feels like a squandered opportunity. So I tried to really vary it up.”
Lean, Mean, and Better Than Ever
If you’re worried about pacing, Cregger seems to be delivering an absolute bullet-train of a film. According to recent listings on the AMC Theatres website, Resident Evil clocks in at a lean 1 hour and 35 minutes (95 minutes)—making it one of the shortest, punchiest entries in the franchise’s cinematic history.
Get ready; the action, chaos, and horror hits theaters nationwide and IMAX September 18 from Sony. Want more of the thrill? Resident Evil is taking over Halloween Horror Nights!
