Zach Cregger Promises a Twisted, Unfiltered RESIDENT EVIL Thanks to "Total Freedom" and Final Cut
Zach Cregger is not playing it safe with Resident Evil. Every new detail about the filmmaker's take on Capcom's iconic horror franchise points in the opposite direction, and it sounds like audiences are in for something seriously unsettling.
The footage we've seen so far already hints at a movie that's embracing chaos in all the right ways. Between zombies crashing down from the sky onto moving cars and massive human-shaped monstrosities lurking beneath the streets, Resident Evil looks like it's leaning hard into nightmare fuel.
As it turns out, Cregger had the creative freedom to take things exactly where he wanted. Speaking with Empire, the director revealed that the studio put an incredible amount of trust in him throughout production.
"I was given total freedom. I have the final cut. I was not interfered with. I didn't have anyone putting any sort of limitations on me."
That's the kind of thing horror fans love hearing, especially after Cregger's breakout work on Barbarian and Weapons. Giving a filmmaker with such an offbeat imagination complete creative control over Resident Evil feels like the perfect recipe for an awesome and scary moviegoing experience.
The film stars Austin Abrams, who reunites with Cregger after Weapons, as a man tasked with transporting an organ through the zombie-infested ruins of Raccoon City. That's already a strange setup, and it sounds like the movie only gets weirder from there.
Of course, taking the reins of one of gaming's biggest horror franchises also comes with enormous pressure. Cregger admitted that directing projects on this scale can be exhausting and even made him question how often he wants to put himself through the experience.
"It's an incredibly demanding job, and I feel like I could burn out. You have to push yourself so hard to make a movie. Every day on set, you have to be the energy source that 150 people feed off, and I don't know if I'll be able to keep it going.
“At the very least, I'm gonna have to take years off. I could change my mind. Maybe in two years I'll be singing a different song. I have no idea. But this is how I've felt for a while.”
Even with that workload, it sounds like he poured everything he had into making Resident Evil as disturbing as possible. Fans of Weapons may remember Aunt Gladys, played by Amy Madigan, whose unforgettable appearance became one of the film's biggest talking points. Cregger says Resident Evil has its own brand of nightmare-inducing imagery waiting for audiences.
"Gladys was a very specific flavor. There are a couple of things in this movie that are really wild, and who's to say whether any of them will be the same lightning-in-a-bottle thing that Gladys was. But there's some imagery in Resident Evil that is so fucked-up and weird.”
Cregger has already shown he has a knack for creating images that linger in your mind long after the credits roll, and giving him final cut without creative restrictions only raises expectations.
If he delivers on what he's teasing here, Resident Evil could end up being one of the franchise's most disturbing live-action adaptations yet.
We'll find out just how far Cregger pushed things when Resident Evil claws its way into theaters on September 18.