Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City, to give the movie its full title, is directed by 47 Meters Down’s Johannes Roberts and marks Sony’s second crack at adapting Capcom’s beloved survival horror series for the big screen, following on from Paul W. S. Anderson’s Milla-Jovovich-starring six-movie take on the video game franchise. “Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town,” explains the official blurb for Roberts’ Resident Evil movie. “The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.” Enter Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Leon S. Kennedy (Avan Jogia), Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), and Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell) to save the day, with other familiar faces including Ada Wong (Lily Gao) and Albert Wesker, as played by Tom Hopper. Unlike Anderson’s first Resident Evil movie - which managed to be vaguely faithful to the video games for all of ten minutes before shooting off on a tangent so wide it could have been an adaptation of literally anything - Roberts’s film, set on a “fateful night…in 1998”, looks to be aiming for a more authentic spin on Capcom’s classic survival horror series. Welcome to Racoon City is inspired by the events of the first and second games, and the newly released trailer has more than its fair share of fan-pleasing nods to the originals - including a recreation of that classic zombie reveal shot, familiar locations including Racoon City PD and the iconic innards of the Spencer Mansion, zombie dogs, old-school outfits, and more. Whether the end result will be any good - or at least entertaining - remains to be seen, but we’ll find out for sure when Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City comes to cinemas on 24th November in the US and on 3rd December in the UK.
