MOVIE NEWS – Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City takes us to the Spencer Mansion at the beginning of the T-virus outbreak in Raccoon City.

The Resident Evil film series has been due for a reboot, as Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Hive films have become increasingly distant from Capcom’s classic games, much to the chagrin of fans. However, Johannes Roberts’ (47 Metres Deep) Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City returns to the roots of the first two video games, with a focus on horror and atmosphere instead of action, as the new trailer shows!

So Raccoon City is a throwback to the first and second Resident Evil and their remakes, as Roberts says he was primarily fascinated by the remakes. The real evil is not the zombies and other mutant creatures, they are just the creatures of the Umbrella Corporation that infest Raccoon City, the title city. As usual, a handful of survivors remain alive, including Leon S. Kennedy, a local police officer, and Claire Redfield, who is searching for her brother. Throughout the plot, of course, we meet the other two iconic Resident Evil heroes, Special Forces squad brother Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, and the central characters also visit the eerie setting of the very first Resi, Spencer Manor. In Raccoon City flashback, they are joined by the tragic Lisa Trevor, on whom Umbrella has carried out horrific experiments that have resulted in more than just her deformed body. Among other things, she is also seen in the first trailer.

Johannes Roberts has stressed that although the film is based on Resident Evil 1-2, it is not a direct adaptation of Resident Evil 1-2, but rather a complement to it, telling a related origin story. So Roberts has made it clear that Leon, for example, is not a cop with balls, but a rookie cop in his rookie days, a nerd rather than a man with much experience. “It was really important to me that this movie scared the hell out of people and that I created a dark, creepy atmosphere that I felt was maybe missing in the previous [Resident Evil] movies, which tended to be more action genre,” the director told IGN in the US, adding that for him George A. Romero’s modern zombie films, John Carpenter’s The Siege of Police Station 13 and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist are the most important sources of inspiration from film history.

Resident Evil – Raccoon City Returns is scheduled for release in Hungarian cinemas on 2 December. The film is written and directed by Johannes Roberts and stars Kaya Scodelario (Claire Redfield), Hannah John-Kamen (Jill Valentine), Robbie Amell (Chris Redfield), Avan Jogia (Leon S. Kennedy), Tom Hopper (Albert Wesker), Neal McDonough (William Birkin), Lily Gao (Ada Wong) and Marina Mazepa (Lisa Trevor).