When it comes to film adaptations of video games, the Resident Evil series is one of the most well-known, as the film franchise has six entries and has made over $1 billion at the box office. Official images of Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City, a film completely separate from the other RE movies, were recently revealed. Thankfully, it looks like it's going to be a faithful interpretation of the game series. While that has definitely been said before about film adaptations of games that turned out to be less than ideal, Welcome to Racoon City might actually be getting things right.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City is going to be following the events of the first two games with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine exploring the Spencer Mansion seen in RE1, and Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy exploring the zombie-infested Racoon City Police Department in RE2. The three images from the film show each of the main characters as well as Lisa Trevor, the experiment-gone-wrong daughter of the Spencer Mansion architect. While it's still early to predict the movie's quality, as these three pictures are all that the public has seen from Welcome to Racoon City, they do seem to capture the spirit of the Resident Evil franchise in a way that the other film adaptations were unable to.
Embracing Resident Evil’s Settings and Characters
The first two Resident Evil games introduced characters that fans instantly latched onto, staying invested in their stories over the course of the series. The four main leads, Jill, Leon, Claire, and Chris, have all been featured in several games - and Welcome to Racoon City has their looks absolutely perfected. From Leon's awkward cop uniform to Chris' basketball-sized biceps, the film seems like it's going to bring each character to life in a way not seen before on screen.
The one image of Chris, Jill, Wesker, and Aiken inside the interior of the Spencer Mansion perfectly captures its lighting, ambience, and look as well. The 2001 remake of Resident Evil was able to reimagine the building in a way that seemed almost life-like, but Welcome to Racoon City's mansion looks almost identical to what was featured in the game. Although the image of Leon and Claire simply features them in a bare hallway with little other than a pipe coming out of the wall, if the film can so accurately capture the essence of the Spencer Mansion in just a single photo, it's likely to do the same with the RCPD.
Providing Spine-Tingling Scares
Of the three images that have been released, the two of Leon and Claire and of the Spencer Mansion succeed at setting the stage of the film's main characters. However, the image of Lisa Trevor is downright terrifying. Lisa Trevor is the daughter of the Spencer Mansion architect and was kidnapped one day by the Umbrella Corporation so that they could do experiments on her body. Her story is a sad one, but integral to the overall plot of the Resident Evil franchise, so it makes sense that she would be included in the film.
Horror is such an important part of the first two Resident Evil games and based on the Lisa Trevor picture, it seems like it'll be at the center of Welcome to Racoon City. Hopefully, the film is able to capture the dread and terror that the first two games instilled in the player, but if the three images say anything, it's that the movie might end up being one of the scariest interpretations of the Resident Evil franchise ever made.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City premieres November 24, 2021.