First Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City trailer teases fresh faces in oldschool horror territory
Resident Evil, both the movies and the video games, is a franchise that’s no stranger to high peaks and low valleys. Some games are good, most movies are bad, and the tone is generally weird and body horror-heavy.
The newest entry in the overall franchise is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, and a trailer for the upcoming movie dropped today.
Check out the first trailer for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City:
And here’s the international trailer for the movie, which has a different tone and shows a bit more footage:
General audiences likely know Resident Evil for the CGI-heavy Milla Jovovich zombie movies. Video game fans, depending on when they jumped on the Resident Evil bandwagon, know Resident Evil as either an oldschool OG survival horror game, a rail shooter game, Resident Evil 4, a run-and-gun action zombie game, or a first-person survival horror game. So, yeah, there’s lots of territory to cover as far as the mythos of the franchise is concerned.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City appears to be taking inspiration from the OG games that started it all, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 for the original PlayStation (Biohazard overseas). Some scenes from the trailer look to be copies of iconic scenes from the first game.
There are other moments that reveal where Welcome to Raccoon City gets its inspiration: The S.T.A.R.S. team entering the mansion, the “itchy tasty” message written in blood (which is originally found in a diary entry in the video game), the semi-truck driver that gets bitten, and more. So, it looks like Welcome to Raccoon City is returning to the franchise roots.
Raccoon City and the Spencer Mansion in the Arklay Mountains are where it all began for a lot of Resident Evil fans. Lots of characters from the first two games (Brad Vickers, Ada Wong, Albert Wesker, Claire and Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon Kennedy) are here. What’s more, that porcelain-looking monster-thing (Lisa Trevor) is a character added to the the Resident Evil Remake for the Nintendo GameCube. The zombie pictured above is even credited on the movie’s IMDb page as “Turnaround Zombie.” There’s no denying Welcome to Raccoon City is heavily inspired by the original Resident Evil story and aesthetic.
BONUS: Once upon a time, long before the Paul W.S. Anderson/Milla Jovovich movies, Bruce Willis was rumored to be playing Barry Burton in a straight adaptation. Wouldn’t that have been something.
Here’s the official plot synopsis for Resident Evil: Welcoem to Raccoon City:
Returning to the origins of the massively popular RESIDENT EVIL franchise, fan and filmmaker Johannes Roberts brings the games to life for a whole new generation of fans. In RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland … with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is written and directed by Johannes Roberts and stars Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Neal McDonough, Donal Logue, Lily Gao, Marina Mazepa, and Nathan Dales. The movie is scheduled to hit theaters on November 24, 2021.
