Resident Evil: Zach Cregger Reveals the Key Test Screenings Change

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When The Hollywood Reporter first caught up with writer-director Zach Cregger in the lead-up to Barbarian’s 2022 release, he detailed the struggles he faced in getting the inventive horror movie off the ground. The film was part of a larger effort to reboot his career after, by his own admission, he wasn’t particularly proud of his previous co-directorial work in the 2010s comedy space. 

Since then, Cregger has gone on one of the most charmed runs of any filmmaker in town. He followed Barbarian’s critically acclaimed, highly profitable release with Weapons, another well-regarded genre film that grossed $270 million against a $38 million budget and featured an Oscar-winning performance from Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys. A prequel about Madigan’s character is now deep into development.

Like Weapons, Cregger’s current film, Resident Evil, and his upcoming Steven Spielberg-produced sci-fi picture, The Flood, were each the subject of furious bidding wars. That kind of demand cements a remarkable career turnaround for a filmmaker who had to scratch and claw to get Barbarian financed just five years ago. But it’s also a subject that Cregger is reluctant to dwell on, given how “here today, gone today” the entertainment industry can be.

“If there’s one thing that is the law of Hollywood, it’s that what goes up must come down,” Cregger tells THR in support of Resident Evil’s Sept. 18 theatrical release. “These things are very, very temporary, and while it’s very, very flattering, I don’t have any illusions that this is my permanent place. I am not Martin Scorsese. I am just me.”

During his professional whirlwind the last handful of years, Cregger often decompresses with video games, and the Resident Evil franchise, particularly Resident Evil 4, has been one of his go-tos. Thus, when it came time to pitch his take on a Resident Evil movie, he aimed to capture his love of the gameplay experience on the big screen. And instead of adapting an existing game narrative, he chose to tell a new, original story about a medical courier named Bryan (played by Cregger’s Weapons actor, Austin Abrams), whose attempt to deliver precious, time-sensitive cargo to Raccoon City General Hospital collides with the franchise’s inciting T-virus outbreak.

Similar to The Odyssey and Lanterns’ brain trusts, Cregger has received no shortage of guff from the Resident Evil faithful for utilizing artistic license in his adaptation. He knew that this type of criticism is part and parcel with major IP, but he’s said elsewhere that he “underestimated” just how much appetite there is for legacy character stories, particularly one involving Leon S. Kennedy. The backlash has even prompted Cregger to previously say that Resident Evil will be the first and last franchise he tackles.

“I cannot be worried about whether I am pleasing enough of every spectrum of fandom. If I tried to please everybody, I’d end up pleasing nobody. That much is obvious,” Cregger says. “I just have to be okay with people voicing their opinion. I’m a grown-up. When I took this on, I understood what I was walking into. So it would be weird for me to act surprised or bent out of shape that the thing that was obviously going to happen is now happening.”

Barbarian and Weapons both succeeded in their masterful ability to strike a balance between horror and comedy without allowing either element to detract from the other. However, test screenings for Resident Evil made Cregger aware that the ratio was more lopsided than expected.

“I learned that people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible,” Cregger shares. “I then found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more, but I also liked the movie a lot more. A little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie, and there’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss.”

Below, during a conversation with THR, Cregger also discusses the personal reasons why Resident Evil was his most challenging shoot yet, before teasing the impactful ending that has been highly protected thus far.

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I know I just introduced myself, but I have to point out that it’s Brian with an i, the proper spelling of the name Brian.

I like that you’re starting there. My assistant’s name is Zac with just a c, and I can’t wrap my head around it, man.

That’s unacceptable.

Yeah, I think so.

You remain the belle of the ball. Every week, it seems like there’s a new bidding war involving you and massive sums of money. You’ve also written and directed an Oscar-winning role. And, most notably of course, THR just named you the top genre filmmaker working today. How do you not let all this go to your head?

I don’t know, man. I try not to put too much brain power into it. If there’s one thing that is the law of Hollywood, it’s that what goes up must come down. These things are very, very temporary, and while it’s very, very flattering, I don’t have any illusions that this is my permanent place. I am not Martin Scorsese. I am just me. It’s a fickle industry. and it would be foolish to think of it any other way. So I’m honored, but I have to only give it so much attention.

That being said, I’ve also felt a great deal of sympathy for you this year. 

(Laughs.)

You, Christopher Nolan and the Lanterns team have all endured an extraordinary amount of bellyaching over the creative license you’ve taken with your respective adaptations. This isn’t anything new, but why do you think it feels particularly extreme this year?

I can’t speak to what the other guys are going through, but in this case, there are different kinds of Resident Evil fans. There are fans like me who love the experience of playing the games and think there’s never been a movie that has represented what it feels like to play Resident Evil. That’s how I categorize myself as a fan.

Then there are fans of the games who specifically love the lore and the characters and the nitty-gritty details of the backstory. But my movie is not spending a lot of currency on those things. I’m not putting any of the legacy characters into this movie. So if that is what you love about these games, then you’re going to feel a certain way about it. Here comes yet another Hollywood movie, and they’re once again not doing Leon and all the characters I was hoping they were going to do.

I understand that perspective, but at the same time, I can’t let that affect my output. I have to make the best version of this movie that I’m capable of making and devote myself entirely to it. I cannot be worried about whether I am pleasing enough of every spectrum of fandom. If I tried to please everybody, I’d end up pleasing nobody. That much is obvious. 

I just have to be okay with people voicing their opinion. I’m a grown-up. When I took this on, I understood what I was walking into. So it would be weird for me to act surprised or bent out of shape that the thing that was obviously going to happen is now happening.

I don’t know about you, but the pandemic reset my priorities. Seeing how fragile this house of cards is — the industry and country alike — I just can’t imagine ever getting worked up over details like you deciding to have snowy streets instead of rainy streets. 

When I read the news and see the insane things that the people in power are doing in this country, it is honestly terrifying. That makes me really put things in perspective when somebody is mad at me for the weather in my Resident Evil movie. I’m like, Alright, dude. Let’s just adjust our priorities a little bit.

People also took issue with you using iPhones?

Yeah, because it’s set in 2026. I’m sorry I’m not making a period piece. I’m taking a liberty.

When you listen to a cover of a well-known song, you want to hear the band or artist’s spin on the material. Nobody criticized Johnny Cash for turning Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” into a gothic country ballad. So I just don’t understand why movies or series are expected to be carbon copies of their source material.

That’s an excellent point — and well made. 

Thanks, Zach.

(Laughs.) No, thank you. This is a really fun interview for me.

Your relationship with Brian Duffield, who also spells his first name correctly, is largely built around sharing memes together.

That’s not accurate. (Laughs.) 

I was just making a Siren Head joke.

Got it!

Have you guys had a chance to discuss who made Austin Abrams suffer the most last year?

Wow, great question. We have not had that conversation yet, but I would love to get Austin in a room with me and Brian. I would have him tally up the points because I think we both gave him a real run for his money.

You previously said that a falling blood bag nearly killed Austin on the Resident Evil set, so I wonder if Brian has his own death-defying moment on the Whalefall set.

I don’t know if he does or doesn’t. After I started telling that story about how Austin almost got killed by a blood bag, I very quickly was like, I don’t feel great about that. I’m not stoked that somebody who worked on my movie was in harm’s way. But also, he wasn’t. He was in line. It was just a little too close for comfort, and we’re being a little dramatic. But I’m glad he’s fine. I’m glad he was unscathed. I’ll just leave it at that.

Austin’s character, Bryan with a y …

Now I see what we’re doing here! I’m just now realizing “Brian with an i” was aimed at me. (Laughs.)

Yes, you set Bryan up to have questionable morals, but then he does something to help someone else that quickly reversed my initial impression of him. 

Yeah, he’s a rascal, but he’s a good person.

Austin does a type of, dare I say, feminine scream in certain moments. 

(Laughs.) Yes, he does.

Did you hear it one day and urge him to double down on it? 

I never urged him. He was in the zone and doing it. I probably laughed really loud, and laughter is the way Austin and I communicate a lot of the time. So I probably encouraged him in that way. But it’s such a wonderful aspect of his character. There is no machismo here. He is just a dude who is embarrassingly panicking his way through the apocalypse, and I think that’s great.

His character works for Lightfoot Medical Transport. What is Lightfoot a reference to, if anything?

We just had to put something on his vest. We were in prep, and they were like, “Come up with five different medical courier company names so we can see if one of them passes legal.” So I wrote a handful of names, and I’m sure it was in a moment of like, “What do I have to do? Really? Fine. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Then they came back and were like, “Lightfoot is legal.” And I was like, “Great, put it on the vest.” There was no more thought to it than that.

What about the picture of Bryan’s girlfriend Michelle on his iPhone? Is that a random Czech actor?

No, that’s one of Austin’s friends. Austin was like, “Could it be her?” And I was like, “Yeah!”

The film is often shot in the style of third-person gameplay. Admittedly, when I first heard you were going for a gamer POV, I worried that Resident might be another Hardcore Henry. While technically impressive, I thought that movie’s first-person perspective limited the narrative. That’s not the case here, but did you have any rules for when you’d break your gameplay approach? 

No rules. I went moment by moment, and I tried to pick the angle that is going to honor the moment. That is the beginning and the end of my concern. I tend to think that the third-person perspective that the games utilize is wildly effective, and so that ended up being the movie’s predominant visual language. The movie is stronger for it. But it’s only inspired by the games; there wasn’t any sort of rule. So I jumped from third person to first person to objective all the time, and it’s a blend. It’s a moment-by-moment thing. You saw the first half hour, so did it feel gimmicky?

Not at all. It felt thoughtful and considered.

That’s good to hear. And that’s how it is for the rest of the movie. It lives in that ratio for the duration. I remember seeing the trailer for Doom, and there was a first-person-shooter shot. And I remember thinking, Dude, I wish they did that for the whole movie. That would be so cool. And I also remember when Hardcore Henry came out and being like, If they pulled this off, that would be so cool. 

But when it was time for me to make Resident Evil, there was never even a consideration that I would be adherent to a video game style all the way through. I just knew that I would be failing in many, many moments. So I’m still hoping for a movie that does [third-person for the entirety], but I’m not the guy to do it.

I love when horror movies light a number of fuses that could detonate at any moment, and you’ve done that here with various elements, such as the hour timer on the package. 

I agree with you. It’s Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table analogy. So I was like, Let’s put a lot of bombs under the table and let’s show all of them. It can only help.

A couple guys named Bill Hader and David Fincher gave you great notes throughout Weapons. Did they contribute to this one?

Dave has been making his own movie, and so we have not had the same idea exchange. Bill read the script, and while he was very complimentary, he was also in the throes of making his own movie. So we didn’t work on anything together. This one has been more straightforward.

No one new entered your orbit with some brilliant piece of advice?

I would love that, but no.

Since I’ve only seen Resident’s first 30 minutes, can you describe the last 30 minutes in a word? 

In a word, bigger. But I want to say so much more. I also think it’s surprising. I love the ending, and I’m very excited for people to see the ending. It’s so hard for me not to talk about it. The ending packs a punch. I’m really proud of it.

Will it make sense why the studio is withholding the ending as long as possible? 

(Cregger responds without hesitation.) Yes.

On the Weapons set, the few days devoted to the kids tearing Gladys apart also tore you apart. You felt like you’d lost control of the wheel. Did you avoid that feeling on Resident?

Yes, I did. However, on this one, I had pneumonia for the first half, and I had Campylobacter jejuni for the back half. So I was very, very ill for the whole production, and everything felt so barely in control because my body was failing me. But I had wonderful, talented department heads, and I had a single actor who is one of the most can-do, positive people I’ve ever met. I was spoiled by the people around me. 

What was hard about this one wasn’t the chaos of the children, but the chaos of the weather and being nocturnal for however many months. We froze our asses off in the north of the Czech Republic. And when you walk in snow, you’ve walked in snow, so how are we going to do take two [without seeing those previous footprints]? Those sorts of things were a whole new flavor of crazy-making, but that’s every movie. Every movie that’s ever been made is kind of crazy-making. So at this point, I just have to say it goes with the territory.

What did you learn and apply from test screenings?

I learned that people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible. I then found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more, but I also liked the movie a lot more. A little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie, and there’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss. So that perspective was really helpful.

I thought the first 30 minutes had an optimal ratio of laughs to scares.

There you go. That’s a testimony to the effectiveness of the feedback. 

Between Shay Hatten co-writing Resident Evil and Zach Shields writing the Aunt Gladys prequel, is this your way of shortening the turnaround time between movies? Or is it your way of saying you can’t do it all anymore? 

I can’t do it all myself. I’m already starting on my next movie [The Flood], and my workload has to be somewhat reasonable so I can devote the appropriate amount of energy to one thing at a time. And I love those guys. They’re talented writers. I’m picking people that I think are up to the task. So, as much as I would love to just go off and be nothing but a writer, I want to be the director. I want to make the movies, and that’s just incredibly time-consuming.

Was there a specific tipping point when you realized this?

Yeah, there was. I was going into production on a movie, and I had an outstanding script assignment. I’m not going to name it, but it’s a script I’m not going to make. So I found myself in a situation where I was not doing a good job on this script, and it was stressing me out. I was already prepping a movie, which is exhausting and totally overwhelming, and then I would come home and feel like I was also behind on my homework. So I was like, This is a way to burn out. This is not a way to do good work, and I’m going to make both things worse if I continue this way. I have to recognize the limits of my abilities and my time.

The Flood is your next film, and you’ve described it as the “last film of this chapter of your life.” 

Yes.

Are you suggesting that you’re leaving genre right after THR named you the top genre filmmaker working today?

(Laughs.) No, I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying that Weapons, Resident Evil and Flood came out of a single burst. I wrote these three scripts after Barbarian in one kind of prolonged chapter of my life. I love them all. And by the time I finish making Flood, years will have passed since I wrote those scripts. So I will be a different person when I sit down to write whatever is going to come next.

Henchman is a DC-related script of yours that you wrote before Barbarian. Is there still no action on that? 

No, none. Believe me, I love Henchman. My love of that script persists, but there’s been no action.

Well, congratulations on the best short film of the year. I can’t wait to see the feature adaptation soon.

Thank you, Brian with an i.

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Resident Evil opens September 18 in movie theaters nationwide.