Fan outrage surged when director Zach Cregger announced his Resident Evil adaptation wouldn’t follow the games’ events. Luckily, the movie rocks, but should that satisfy you, consider seeking solace in knowing it feels a lot like the adaptation of another excellent title.
Major spoilers for Resident Evil ahead
I’m talking about Playdead’s Inside from 2016, one of the best indie experiences of all time that, in a bunch of amusing ways, mirrors the plot of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. Now, sure, Inside is a 2D side-scroller. At first, that might look like an impossible thing to adapt—at least before you realize that there’s something even more linear than a side-scroller: a movie. And Cregger’s Resident Evil follows an especially linear structure, but the ties go way beyond that.
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Both games feature a mostly clueless protagonist who begins their quest in a creepy forest at night, then has an altercation with dogs, finds out one of the aggressive animals he comes in contact with is actually infected with a tapeworm-like parasite, and then has a really scary encounter with a seemingly harmless child. All this as they messily sneak their way into increasingly perilous areas until they reach a massive, mysterious scientific compound. And sure, that’s where all Resident Evil games end, but in this movie, the main character, Bryan, is constantly on the run from a monster that, just like the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, has made it its life’s mission to get him. Still, this monster looks nothing like Nemesis. The antagonist here is an amorphous mass of various corpses it assimilated along the way that rolls over everything to get to Bryan.
Right now, the most I can show you of it is the interesting glimpse of it we catch in the trailer:
But trust me, it gets bigger and better. Now, while that concept might seem similar to the rat king from The Last of Us Part 2, it perfectly mirrors both the aesthetics and the events of Inside.
The pursuer from Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil looks just like the creature the main character in Inside ends up turning into.
The difference is that in the Resident Evil movie, Bryan has to fight off this thing. In Inside, we are the thing, so that’s just a similar monster in two similar stories. Or is it?
Little did I know that, at the end of Resident Evil, Bryan also turns into an even scarier version of that thing and, much like in Inside, gets heavily antagonized by everyone around him. Unsurprisingly, and even though he’s not in control of his body(s), he easily disposes of everyone in extremely gory fashion right before the credits roll. Just like the main character in Inside, Bryan will remain in this new form he doesn’t understand, and certainly didn’t want.
And before anyone even thinks to recommend I buy a tinfoil hat, I don’t think this was necessarily a conscious decision by Cregger or co-writer Shay Hatten. Either way, it’s one of those things that once seen, you won’t be able to unsee. It’s also a good solution for all the people pre-hating the movie because it doesn’t feature enough Jill Sandwiches, or something.
Resident Evil is now in theaters and is the best-rated video game movie adaptation of all time. Don’t you trust critics? Trust me, then, as I say it absolutely rocks. Otherwise, you can check out 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the 30% Rotten Tomatoes-rated adaptation that follows not the plot of one, but two Resident Evil games.
