Zach Cregger is confident he’s rocked the landing on his Resident Evil reboot and tells reporters that he is especially proud of the film’s closing moments after a shoot that leaned heavily on tightly choreographed camerawork between director, camera operator and star.
Cregger, who co-wrote the film with Shay Hatten, described the opening as being light and building towards an ending he singled out as excellent.
“But then there’s also the first half hour. It’s short, like one big long scene in a way that I think works so well,” he said.
“So the last 30 seconds of the movie for me is so, I’m very proud of the last 30 seconds. So when I see that, when the movie ends, I’m always really happy.”
Star Austin Abrams, who plays medical courier Bryan, described the technical demands of filming as a true collaboration between himself and the crew.
“We did a lot of camera work. It was a real dance with the camera,” Abrams said.
“James, our camera operator, had to be really precise and I had to be really precise with his shots and get around to the camera at the same time.”
Asked about the film’s connection to its source material’s signature gameplay, Cregger drew a parallel to filmmaking itself: “Resource management is every film ever made. We have almost enough to do what we want. How do we make it work?”
The film follows Bryan, a medical courier who struggles to survive after a delivery goes wrong in the infamous Raccoon City, and deliberately avoids using established characters from the video game series.
Cregger, a self-described lifelong fan of the games, has previously said that he wanted the film to honor the feeling of playing them rather than simply translating their plots to the screen.
The production reportedly featured a near-miss during a stunt involving practical explosions surrounding Abrams, which Cregger has said in a separate interview “would have killed him” if the timing had been off by a single step.
Resident Evil is set to premiere in theaters on September 18.
