It’s been less than five years since the very final conclusion of the Resident Evil film series, but a reboot is already in development. And while the previous efforts were only loosely inspired by the games, some photos taken of shooting locations on this new outing suggest that it may hew far closer to the source material.
While the movies crafted their own saga, they ultimately used characters and monster seen in the video games, albeit in stories and situations invented for the films. These pics, however, strongly hint at an experience closer to that which longtime fans will be familiar with.
In particular, the shots of a creepy forest and a helicopter strongly invoke the live-action opening sequence of the first game, where an elite task force of the police officers are sent to search for their missing teammates, who disappeared after investigating a series of murders with hallmarks of cannibalism. It sees them helicoptered up to the hills surrounding the nearby town, where they’re immediately set upon by mutated dogs and seek refuge in a creepy mansion that has far more to it than first appears, the façade of which can been seen as set dressing.
The games are designed as survival horror rather than action, meaning that resources have to be consumed judiciously, and if you attempt to engage every enemy encountered, you soon run out of ammo and are reduced to fending off zombies with a knife, which rarely ends well. Combat is always a last resort, and while the reboot movie will doubtless feature its fair share of fight scenes against the relentless undead, they likely won’t be as constant or histrionic as Paul W.S. Anderson’s efforts.
With the cast of characters including Chris, Jill, Wesker, Claire, Leon and Birkin, it suggests the story will be a mashup of the first two games, as the latter three are not featured until the second, so there may be a pair of parallel plotlines running through it. If nothing else, though, it certainly seems that the Resident Evil reboot will be far more familiar to fans of the source material.
