Every piece of news about the reboot of the Resident Evil film franchise makes us more excited for it, from its ‘90s setting to photos being eerily recognizable as lifted from the games. Now, its director has stated that the tone is heavily influenced by the works of John Carpenter, conjuring a barrage of imagery that perfectly fits the scenario.
The movie, officially titled Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, retells the events of the first two games, uncovering the secrets of Spencer Mansion and the outbreak of viral zombies taking over the streets of the titular industrial town. When speaking to IGN, director Johannes Roberts briefly discussed how Carpenter’s early works Assault On Precinct 13 and The Fog shaped the project, saying:
“I’m a huge John Carpenter fan and I really took to that. The way he tells these claustrophobic siege movies and I took movies like Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog and these disparate group of characters coming together under siege, and I took that as my filmic inspiration.”
While Carpenter’s cinematic output is not the most prolific – 18 features in over 45 years – his talent is such that even his lesser efforts, such as Prince of Darkness or the remake of Village of the Damned, stand high above many of his contemporaries’ greatest achievements. And if you’re going to take inspiration, you might as well do so from an acknowledged master.
Assault On Precinct 13 is set in a police station hours away from being decommissioned, only to become besieged by ceaseless waves of gang members out for blood, and brings full circle the cycle of lifting concepts across genres, being primary derived from Night of the Living Dead. The Fog, meanwhile, is a ghost story of revenant sailors returning from their watery graves to extract vengeance on the descendants of the town founders responsible for their deaths a century previously, the climax of which sees the survivors holed up in a church as the reanimated mariners come for them.
The former’s inexhaustible supply of faceless invaders and the latter’s sinister atmosphere of relentless dread permeating every moment should combine into a Resident Evil experience not yet seen on the big screen, but one that just thinking about is enough to make you salivate with anticipation.
