The upcoming Resident Evil movie gives the series a fresh spin, as it features an original story set on the outskirts of the Resident Evil 2 game. Still, director Zach Cregger has promised fans that his film features a bunch of Easter eggs, and the latest trailer includes some of those. It follows medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams), who takes on a risky delivery job outside of Raccoon City.
Of course, things go very wrong. He encounters nasty creatures and fights to survive in a seemingly abandoned farmhouse. I don’t think this is quite as scary as the first trailer, but there are still a few unnerving beats, like when Bryan returns to a blood-splattered hospital and sees a very small hand, possibly belonging to a zombie newborn, emerging from a cot.
There are several fun nods to the games, including a typewriter in the farmhouse, a box of shotgun shells and the literal medical pack that Bryan is carrying. The trailer evokes a similar survival horror tone to the games too. We won’t have to wait too much longer until to see the film. Resident Evil will hit theaters on September 18.
The official trailer is more about the set-up, about who Bryan is and how everything goes so very wrong for him. It also, in classic horror movie fashion, makes actions that would be not only logical but morally correct outside of a horror movie seem like something only a complete dullard would do. Case in point: early on in the trailer, Bryan hits someone with his car on a snowy road. And then he gets out of the car to check on the person, and then he gets trapped in Raccoon City, and then he realizes something is wrong, and then he finds a shotgun with no bullets, and then he spends a little while searching for ammo… and the whole time you’re thinking, “He could’ve avoided this whole mess if he just drove away.”
I’m not saying that Resident Evil is advocating hit and runs—I’m just saying that, based on the evidence presented in this trailer, he definitely should have just left the scene of the crime and spent the rest of his life desperately suppressing the overwhelming guilt and fear. Anyway, here’s the new trailer. It’s very good! The trailer also gives us our first glimpse at anyone (living) in the film besides Bryan, with Carl, an Umbrella scientist (Paul Walter Hauser) showing up to deliver an ominous message. Still no sign of Zach Cherry or Kali Reis, who also play Umbrella scientists, though.
