When a couple of days ago I wrote about Chandler Riggs’ fan adaptation of Resident Evil 7, I really had no idea it would end up being AAA quality. I suppose my experience with fan movies in general always boiled down to the same: I recognize they have soul, but I don’t pretend they are in any way “proper” films.
But Riggs definitely changed that for me, as his take on BIOHAZARD is by far the best I’ve ever seen, and though brief, it almost manages to outclass Zach Cregger’s stellar adaptation on a much, much smaller budget.
As opposed to Cregger’s take, this movie adapts the actual game. It opens up with Ethan listening to a tape he received from Mia and is immediately transported to the scene where he meets the Baker family. The food on the table is as disgusting, if not more so, than in the game, and the family members, Marguerite, Jack, and Lucas, are just as insane as their video game counterparts.
Marguerite’s actress in particular spectacularly pulls off her character, with the added realistic flair and grounding of actual Southern American that only adds color and depth to her lines, which are, much like the rest of the movie, fairly close to the original. Things follow along a beaten path set by Resident Evil 7: Lucas gets his arm severed by Jack, and the man of the house gets up close and personal with Ethan, who, in this film, has an actual face (played by Riggs himself).
The whole setting for that first scene is oppressively detailed. Every bit of the room is meticulously accurate to the source material, while we get a first taste of the film’s practical effects after that arm-cutting session and when Jack carves out one of Ethan’s teeth. Of course, the phone rings as it does in the game and briefly breaks the mold’s grip on the Bakers’ minds, but that only gives Ethan a moment of respite to break out of captivity and start roaming the P.T.-like corridors of RE7‘s earlier sections.
While definitely not as scary, courtesy of the different medium and the lack of a first-person camera angle, Riggs’ movie perfectly captures the tension of running away from an infuriated Jack Baker, who in this film is rather different and somehow even more of a psychopath than his video game version. It makes sense, though, considering he’s played by Jason Douglas, who voices the Psycho in Borderlands 2.
Ethan runs around mindlessly, much like the player would, while Jack gains teleportation abilities and appears in front of him despite being half a house away just a moment ago. Many of these are nods to the game’s mechanics that put Jack on your tail at all times, and even when you think you’ve gotten away, he finds a way to catch up. This extends to the scenes in the garage – Jack is an omnipresent evil and danger that never relents, and the only times he does is when he does it on purpose, first by impaling himself on the spikes, and then by shooting into his own mouth to show the perks of the mold to Ethan.
Every part of this movie is lore-accurate and faithful to what Resident Evil 7 did as a video game. The setting, the story, the atmosphere – everything works and blends together and is only enhanced by the incredibly realistic practical effects that breathe new life into and even add to the disturbing nature of the story.
When told as a video game, we are sort of detached from the horrors of RE‘s world, but when Riggs uses such fantastic effects and techniques, we are suddenly yanked much closer to the events on display. The wall between the player and the world is very much thinned out, and while disbelief is sustained, the viewer is left pretty terrified. Again, it’s not as scary, or rather, it’s scary but in a different way.
At any rate, though, this is one fine project, whose only flaw is that it wasn’t longer. At only 19 minutes, the runtime expires before you know it, leaving a lot of the story unadapted and the ending abrupt. Without the opening segment of the game, it relies on foreknowledge anyway, so it’s definitely one for you, the players, rather than a broader audience.
But it does prove that Capcom could – if it would – make a realistic, direct adaptation of one of its Resident Evil games.
This is an unscored review, but if I could give it one, it’d be an 8.5/10.
