Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil movie may draw from one of gaming's most recognizable survival-horror worlds, but the director's stated film influences point in a surprising direction. While the chaotic, splattery energy of Evil Dead 2 sounds like a natural comparison for a story involving a biohazard outbreak, Cregger has also named Sam Mendes' World War I drama 1917 as an important structural touchstone.
The comparison is not meant to suggest that the new Resident Evil plays like a war movie, or that it shares 1917's tone. Instead, Cregger sees a connection in the way its protagonist is pushed through escalating danger by the urgency of a single assignment. The director summarized the unusual combination by describing the film as something born from Evil Dead 2 and 1917, even while acknowledging that the description sounds unconventional.
That pairing offers a useful clue about the kind of experience Cregger is aiming for: a horror movie built around relentless forward movement, mounting obstacles, and a central character who has little choice but to keep going.
A mission to Raccoon City
The new film tells an original story set within the larger Resident Evil universe rather than directly adapting one installment of Capcom's game series. Its lead is a dissatisfied medical courier who agrees to carry a mysterious package to Raccoon City. What begins as a job becomes a nightmare when a laboratory-created virus starts devastating humanity, placing the courier in the middle of the city's unfolding catastrophe.
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That premise makes the 1917 comparison easier to understand. Mendes' 2019 film follows two British soldiers tasked with delivering a vital message during World War I, with the success of their mission carrying life-or-death consequences. The journey itself is the engine of the movie. Each new area presents another threat, delay, or impossible decision, and the characters' focus remains fixed on reaching their destination.
Cregger's Resident Evil appears to apply a related framework to zombie horror. Rather than centering solely on an isolated group trying to outlast a siege, the movie follows someone who must travel toward an increasingly dangerous place. Survival matters, of course, but the mission supplies the momentum. The courier has a destination, a package, and an outbreak rapidly making every step of the route more perilous.
For a franchise with a long history of stories about critical objectives, from securing samples and keys to escaping infected facilities or stopping viral weapons, this is a particularly compatible way to approach Resident Evil. The games have frequently made players move forward under pressure. Even when ammunition is scarce and enemies are waiting around the next corner, progression depends on entering the next room, unlocking the next door, and confronting whatever is blocking the route.
Why Evil Dead 2 belongs in the equation
If 1917 helps explain the movie's propulsion, Evil Dead 2 offers a clearer indication of the horror flavor Cregger has in mind. Sam Raimi's 1987 classic is remembered for its manic pacing, physical comedy, gruesome effects, and willingness to make terror feel deliriously entertaining. It moves between grotesque imagery and heightened absurdity without sacrificing the intensity of its scares.
That influence is especially notable given Cregger's own work. He previously wrote and directed Barbarian, a horror film that earned attention for its sudden tonal pivots, inventive set pieces, and readiness to take its audience somewhere unexpected. A Resident Evil movie informed by the unruly spirit of Evil Dead 2 could potentially embrace the franchise's stranger edges rather than treating its monsters and conspiracies as purely grim material.
The series has always had room for that balance. Its earliest entries established a tense, claustrophobic mood inside mansions, police stations, laboratories, and other enclosed spaces. But over the years, Resident Evil has also become known for enormous mutations, eccentric villains, improbable gadgets, ludicrously dangerous corporate experiments, and action sequences that can be frightening one moment and gleefully excessive the next.
That elasticity is one reason adapting Resident Evil can be difficult. A version that is too solemn may miss the wild B-movie pulse behind its creature designs and conspiracies. One that leans entirely into spectacle can lose the dread, vulnerability, and resource-pressure that distinguish survival horror from ordinary action. Cregger's stated blend suggests he is pursuing both motion and menace, with room for a more energetic and playful strain of horror.
An original route through a familiar universe
The decision to tell a new story is significant. The Resident Evil games have an extensive cast and a sprawling chronology, including familiar figures such as Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, and Albert Wesker. Any screen adaptation that uses those names inevitably faces expectations around particular plot points, locations, enemies, and relationships.
By focusing on a medical courier caught at the beginning of Raccoon City's disaster, the film can inhabit the same world without being restricted to a scene-for-scene version of a game. It also puts the audience beside someone who is not presented as an elite operative or a battle-hardened survivor. The protagonist is described as slightly miserable, an everyman quality that could make the outbreak's scale feel more immediate.
Raccoon City remains one of the franchise's most potent settings because it represents the point at which secretive pharmaceutical horror becomes public collapse. The city is not simply another infected zone. It is the place where the consequences of hidden research, corporate wrongdoing, and biological experimentation finally spill into streets, homes, and public institutions. For players, it has been explored through several perspectives across the games. A courier racing into it with a mysterious delivery gives the film a new angle on a well-known disaster.
There is also built-in dramatic tension in the fact that the protagonist is heading toward danger without fully understanding it. The audience knows the name Raccoon City and the implication of a newly unleashed virus. The courier does not initially possess that context. That gap can make each discovery land as both a plot development and an encounter with the franchise's mythology.
1917's influence is about shape, not imitation
1917 received ten nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards and won for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. Its technical presentation became a major part of the conversation around the film, particularly its carefully designed appearance of unfolding in one extended take. However, Cregger's comparison does not establish that Resident Evil uses the same visual technique or a similar historical-drama style.
What the influence does suggest is a focus on narrative shape. In the context of a mission narrative, structure is not merely a matter of having an objective. It is about how the objective determines where the protagonist goes, who they encounter, what they are forced to sacrifice, and how each obstacle makes the final destination feel more difficult to reach.
That can be an ideal skeleton for horror. The best survival-horror games often create anxiety by turning forward progress into a risk. A player needs to leave a safe room, cross a dangerous hallway, return through a previously cleared location that may no longer be safe, or commit to a route because there is no better option. The goal is simple; reaching it is not. Cregger's comments indicate that the film may seek a similarly concentrated sense of escalation.
It is also a promising answer to the challenge of translating interactive tension into a non-interactive medium. Games can create dread through limited inventory, scarce healing items, uncertain enemy behavior, and the player's direct responsibility for every decision. A film cannot reproduce those mechanics exactly. It can, however, create pressure through a protagonist whose route is urgent and whose options become narrower at every stage.
Cregger and Shay Hatten share screenplay credit
Cregger directs the film from a screenplay written with Shay Hatten. Hatten's previous work includes writing credits on large-scale franchise projects, while Cregger brings his own background in off-kilter comedy and horror. Their collaboration places an original story inside a property that has repeatedly reinvented itself across games, movies, animation, and other media.
That history creates room for different interpretations, but it also means fans will be watching for the details that make a story feel authentically Resident Evil. Raccoon City and a lab-made virus are foundational elements, yet the atmosphere around them will matter just as much. The franchise works best when outbreak horror is paired with a growing realization that there is a larger system behind the disaster: research facilities, compromised institutions, dangerous people protecting dangerous information, and creatures that become more horrifying as the truth emerges.
Cregger's description of the film through two very different reference points gives viewers a preliminary idea of how he intends to navigate that territory. The movie is positioned as a desperate trip through an outbreak, driven by a task that cannot be ignored, while maintaining the potential for explosive, outrageous horror.
A different kind of survival story
For longtime players, the most compelling aspect of the premise may be its apparent emphasis on someone trying to complete a job rather than someone already equipped to fight a biological catastrophe. The courier's package is mysterious, Raccoon City is falling apart, and the stakes expand far beyond a simple delivery. That is a compact setup with plenty of space for escalating revelations.
It also captures a core idea that has run through the games since the beginning: ordinary spaces become hostile when an invisible experiment turns into an uncontrollable outbreak. A city route becomes a gauntlet. A delivery becomes a survival mission. And the person trying to finish it must navigate a world where the rules have changed faster than anyone can explain them.
Resident Evil is now in theaters. Cregger's 1917 and Evil Dead 2 comparison may sound unlikely at first, but it points to a clear ambition: a film that keeps moving, keeps escalating, and finds a distinctive route into one of horror gaming's most enduring worlds.
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