Zach Cregger is confident he shook the landing on his resident Evil reboot, and told reporters that he’s especially proud of the film’s final moments after a shoot that relied heavily on tightly choreographed camera work between the director, camera operator and star.
Cregger, who wrote the film with Shay Hatten, described the opening as easy, building toward an ending that stood out par excellence.
“But there’s also the first half hour. It’s short, like one big long scene in a way that I think works really well,” he said.
“So for me, the last 30 seconds of the movie are very proud of them. So when I see them, when the movie ends, I’m always very happy.”
Star Austin Abrams, who plays medical courier Bryan, described the technical demands of filming as a genuine collaboration between him and the crew.
“We were working a lot with the camera. It was a real dance with the camera,” Abrams said.
“James, our camera operator, had to be very precise, and I had to be very precise in his shots and get close to the camera at the same time.”
When asked about the film’s connection to the signature gameplay of its source material, Cregger drew a parallel to filmmaking itself: “Resource management is every movie ever made. We have almost enough to do what we want. How do we make it work?”
The film follows Bryan, a medical courier who finds himself fighting for survival after a birth goes wrong in the infamous Raccoon City, deliberately avoiding the use of established characters from the video game series.
Cregger, a self-described lifelong fan of the games, previously said he wanted the film to honor the feeling of playing them rather than simply translating their plots to the screen.
The production reportedly included a near-miss during a stunt involving practical explosions around Abrams, which Cregger said in a separate interview “would have killed him” if time had been shifted by a single step.
resident Evil will be released in theaters on September 18.
