It really shouldn’t be as hard as Hollywood makes it seem, but nobody’s had much luck making a straightforward Resident Evil adaptation that is actually good. The Paul W.S. Anderson series used the aesthetics and some of the characters of the video game series to tell their own completely wackadoo story, last year’s ‘90s-set reboot Welcome To Raccoon City stripped all of the stupid stuff away and replaced it with nothing of particular interest, and at the same time Netflix released a CG tie-in with the video games called Infinite Darkness… but it wasn’t part of the current Resident Evil video games that are really good, as it was specifically set right in the window when the games had gotten pretty bad.
Well, as they say, the 10th time or so is the charm, and Netflix is back again with a completely unrelated Resident Evil project—and when we say “completely unrelated,” we mean it. This is another total reboot of the franchise, and it’s unclear if the events of any of the video games or movies happened in this universe. The only reason we know this is Resident Evil is because of the existence of zombies, the evil zombie-makin’ Umbrella Corp., and sunglasses-wearing Umbrella stooge Albert Wesker (the surprise villain in the first game). That being said, this looks like an homage to the Anderson movies and their cartoonish level of bombast and sci-fi technology more than anything, which is definitely a choice.
The aforementioned Wesker is played by Lance Reddick in this series, though he barely appears in this trailer, which instead focuses on his family living in post-apocalypse New Raccoon City in 2022 and post-post-apocalypse London a decade later. Also: Today We Learned that the “Buy The World A Coke” song was rerecorded with non Coca-Cola lyrics, and 50 years later it appeared in a trailer for a new Resident Evil TV show! Though now we’re just wishing that somebody had rerecorded it again with lyrics about Resident Evil… I’d like to give the world the T-Virus, and turn them into zombies…
Anyway, Resident Evil premieres on Netflix on July 14.