Everyone knows movies and TV shows where New York is practically another character, be implicit in Sex and the City or literal in They came together, but it’s not the only city that can be a character: Chicago is a character in Ferris Bueller’s day off, Los Angeles is a character of La La Land, and that covers all three cities in the United States. But what about fictional cities? Well, for the new resident Evil film, director Johannes Roberts is taking a page of all these classic stories in which New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are so integral parts of the story that they are practically other characters.
He literally said that during a IGN panel in SXSW, during which he revealed that the film is called Resident Evil: Raccoon City—The name of the city where the action of the first three video games in the series is concentrated. “Raccoon City plays a big role and is a character in the film,” he explained, adding: “It’s about this group of people who come from different angles – some coming to the city, others having already grown up in this city – coming together this evening fateful. “(We are not going to spoil what happens to make this night fateful, but it involves the dead coming back to life and developing an insatiable desire to chew people.)
Roberts has already said that the film set in the 90s is “a lot and an origin story” for resident Evil, and will be pulling a lot of characters from the games. Avan Jogia will star as Leon S. Kennedy, with Kaya Scodelario de Crawl playing Claire Redfield, Robbie Amell from The Flash playing his brother Chris, Hanna John-Kamen mastering the unlock and avoiding becoming a sandwich like Jill, Neil McDonough as the totally normal scientist William Birkin and Tom Hopper (The Umbrella Academygorilla type) like Albert Wesker – a totally normal policeman with no ulterior motives.
The new film will apparently have a tone much more like John Carpenter than the other resident Evil films, which should be quite manageable if Roberts is limited to the main plot points of the first two games. These two in particular were about tension and the moments of silence that made the big scares land much better, as long as there are no prolonged sequences in the film where Leon, Claire, Chris and Jill struggle to keep track of where they’re supposed to use the sword key, the bishop’s plug and several different types of cranks.