If you’ve ever played a Resident Evil game, there’s a pretty good chance you remember the first time the series managed to scare you. Over the last 25 years, Capcom’s survival horror franchise has terrified countless players around the globe, and the cast of the upcoming film is no exception! ComicBook.com had the chance to ask several members of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City‘s cast about the first time one of the games managed to scare them. The answers span the history of the franchise, and it’s interesting to see just how varied the responses are!
Robbie Amell (Chris Redfield): I was too young to be playing the game, and I made the mistake of playing the game, and one of my earliest video game memories, sitting in the basement, and the dogs jumping through the window, and just scaring the hell out of me. And I think I was nine at the time. It was really dumb, but I grew up playing hockey and video games, and both my parents work. So I probably wasn’t as supervised as I should have been.
Tom Hopper (Albert Wesker): “Ah, right, ’cause I’m 36, so I was like 11, yeah, probably like 11 or 12, when I first played the game and yeah, like yourself, it was my first experience of being scared, while playing a game. I said, you know, before that, I suppose like Doom was before that and Wolfenstein and those kind of games, but it was the first one, ’cause you know, you play these games thinking, oh, it’s like quite intense, but you had no idea, that you’re actually gonna be properly scared. You know, I barely watched any horror movies at that point, so to have that experience, where you’re actually in control of the game was defining, you know, it was genre defining really.”
Avan Jogia (Leon S. Kennedy): “The thing about Resident Evil is it’s multi-generational, right, like there’s so many different versions of people getting into the games and just in general into, you know. Resident Evil 4 was my game, that’s the one that I grew up with and got into. I remember playing [Resident Evil] 2, I remember playing [Resident Evil] One, but vaguely, but everyone has this sort of memory, who’s around our age or even younger, everyone of like being over to someone’s house, like two o’clock in the morning, you’re like three sodas deep, you know, you’ve caffeinated and you’re like, don’t want to turn the corner of Resident Evil and your friend, you give the controller over to your friend and he does it. Like just being a little, you know, that to me is like, those are the memories that people have of Resident Evil is that fear, you know, and that’s what I think, you know, when Johannes went to go make the movie, he really was like, I think very aware of like that is the thing, that is culturally significant about this particular IP or this, you know, what does it mean, “Resident Evil?” That’s what Resident Evil means. So he just concentrated on the horror and he’s a horror guy himself and that’s all over the DNA of the film.”
Johannes Roberts (director): “I was never a gamer, and then the PlayStation came out and it made gaming cool. And I was a student and it was a very weird time in that I was always a super big horror nerd, but all the stuff that I was into was just not cool anymore. I was having to travel miles to go and see In The Mouth of Madness, just go and see Carpenter’s new one that three people went to see, you know. And Scream was big. And I didn’t get Scream. It was all winking at the camera and I felt horror was in a weird place and I didn’t get it. And then suddenly this game came out that was in love with everything that I was in love with, like was in love with Romero. You know, people had forgotten and Romero hadn’t worked for ages and it loved all this stuff that I have grown up on. And I’d watch people play this. And it was just terrifying. And that’s how I got into it. I was a voyeur. And then through that started playing the game and started getting into the whole Resident Evil world. And now I’m an adult junkie of it all.”
It’s interesting to see how the series has impacted so many people, and how the horror aspect remains a pivotal part of the experience. Since 1996, the Resident Evil games have been scaring audiences, and they continue to do so throughout their various incarnations. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is positioned as a faithful take on the first two Resident Evil games, both in story, and in tone. Hopefully, the film will manage to capture the element of fear that the games has managed so well. Fans can find out for themselves when Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City releases in theaters on November 24th. In the meantime, readers can check out our previous coverage of the film right here.
Are you looking forward to the next Resident Evil movie? What’s the first time you can remember being scared by the games? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!