From the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) comes a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise. In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), 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.
Visionary director Zach Cregger resets RESIDENT EVIL as a suspenseful, elevated horror. This film honours the legacy of the games, while delivering a bold, gripping & terrifying new vision, for both fans and the uninitiated.
As Resident Evil prepares to hit Australian cinemas on September 17, Nick L’Barrow spoke with director and co-writer Zach Cregger about creating the video game visuals of the film, casting Austin Abrams, and whether it’s harder to scare audiences or make them laugh!
Nick: What you and Dariusz Wolski have achieved with the visuals of this film is truly incredible. I’m curious to know what those early conversations with him were like in finding the film’s look? And what were the movies of his you had seen that made Dariusz feel like the right guy for the job?
Zach Cregger: You know, I was really taken with his work on Prometheus. A lot of the stuff he did with Ridley Scott I really loved. I like that he can be so restrained with his lighting, but he has a way of making things feel so natural and stylised at the same time. And I think that is a rare quality. Even with The Crow, he’s a cinematographer whose natural inclination is to go dark, and I love that. I called a producer who’d worked with him a bunch, and I was kind of getting a report card on how Dariusz is to work with, and he was like, “You’re always going to be needing him to put more light on the scene, because he always wants to go dark!” And I was like, “I bet you I don’t!” It ended up being a really happy marriage because we both like dark stuff. We like dark images. So, it was a real treat to have somebody who just kind of got what I was trying to do. Also, Dariusz is so amenable to me because I am a tyrant about what lens is being used and where the camera is going to go. I can be real stubborn on that stuff. But he was so cool with helping me execute that and not having big debates about this sort of stuff, and he just made it look so great. I really enjoyed working with him. He’s a really talented dude. He’s been doing this for so long, and I was able to just sponge up a ton of knowledge from him. It was great.
Nick: Austin Abrams is fantastic here. I’ve loved a lot of what he has done, but truly one of my favourite scenes in Weapons is him calling the police station after finding the kids in the basement, and he says. “I’m phobic”. And he kind of recreates that energy in a scene with a police officer in this film. So, I’m curious to know when in the creative process did you realise Austin was the right fit for this role?
ZC: I’d written Resident Evil way before we even made Weapons. So, while we were shooting Weapons, I was doing that sequence with him and it was becoming clear that this guy just checks all the boxes. We got along great and we had the same sensibility about the process of being on set. It was harmony. When I was in the edit of Weapons, Resident Evil got more or less greenlit, and it was really fun because I got to reach out to Austin and be like, “Hey dude, let’s do another one!”
Nick: He makes some reactionary noises in this film that I didn’t know were possible to come out of a human!
ZC: Yeah… I didn’t love that! It’s kind of girly [laughs]. But it’s in the movie. No, I loved it!
Nick: As someone who has done great work in comedy, horror, and a hybrid of them both – is it harder to make an audience laugh or is it harder to scare them?
ZC: God. That is such a hard question to answer. God. I think scaring people is really hard, but I think making people laugh might be harder. If I make something really scary, I’m going to scare everyone in the room. But telling a joke is so subjective. Humour is so subjective that it might only work for a very narrow demographic. They might think it’s the funniest thing in the world, but it’s only 20% of people who are getting it. I feel like if you’re making a horror movie, and you have four moments where the audience laughs in that horror movie, they’re going to walk out saying, “That was pretty funny”. But if you make a comedy and you only have four laughs in it, they’re going to say it sucks. So I feel like I’m already on third base when I’m making these movies, in terms of the comedy. But I try not to go for the laughs too often. But, if I get one, I’ll take it.
Nick: I’ve heard you talk before about how when you’re writing a script, you’re visualising the movie as you write it. There are many great moments of silent tension in Resident Evil, so I’m curious to know what that actually looks like written out in your scripts.
ZC: What it really looks like is not being afraid to push return and letting my pages have a lot of negative space. I will go ‘he opens the door’, beat, ‘darkness’, beat, a light comes on. I just want to make the reader experience the pacing the way I am going to shoot the pacing. I think it is totally allowed and I kind of force the rhythm to the reader, as opposed to putting it all in a block of paragraph. I’ll break it up even if I am only saying three things.
Thank you so much to Zach for his time, and to Sony Pictures for organising the interview. Resident Evil is in Australian cinemas September 17.
