‘Resident Evil’ Director Zach Cregger on Bringing Video Game Visuals to the Big Screen

Zach Cregger is more than ready to take on a horror gaming classic in a new way. At a special Resident Evil footage screening and Q&A earlier this week that we attended, the Weapons and Barbarian director broke down a few of the scenes from the trailer and talked about how his love for video games influenced his approach to filming.

You can always tell when a director is genuinely passionate about a project, and Cregger is especially well-versed in this apocalyptic world. While speaking with host Al Horner, Cregger waxed poetic about his own experience with the Resident Evil franchise.

One of the things he touched on as a gaming fan is how the stakes work in a video game versus a live-action film. “When you’re playing a video game, you’re participating,” he said. “Like, if you f*** up, you could die, you know? So you’re just you’re naturally very invested. You’re responsible and you don’t get to have that investment in a movie. But what you get from the movie is you get to pay a little bit more attention to pacing and storytelling and performance.”

Cregger’s take on Resident Evil lands viewers within the heart of the game itself

He strived to make sure that Resident Evil felt like it was a video game, but almost as if the viewer was watching a play-through. When shooting, angles were important.

“I feel like people my age and younger who are raised playing a lot of video games, we have kind of inherited this visual language from the game,” he said. “So this is kind of third person perspective where you’re following the character, but you’re seeing the world around them. And as they turn and look right, we swing and we look right. When Austin [Abrams] looks up, we drop the camera down. We have to make sure that everyone is choreographed together, the operator and the actor so that so that we’re shifting our attention at the right time. That’s something that the games do so well, you know, this sort of third person visual language. It’s really effective at immersing you in a location and in a place.”

Cregger took every chance he could to make effects real

Making sure that the visuals onscreen were a priority for Cregger. Speaking on a scene from the trailer where Bryan (Abrams) is running from zombies as they leap off of the roofs of nearby buildings, Cregger told Horner about the task of bringing that to life.

“We had to design this thing where he’s running and bodies are falling and detonating all around him. I knew I didn’t want to do it with VFX. Where all these explosions are real, the way to do it is to get a bunch of cranes and you have all these body sized blood bags and you rehearse the sh*t out of how they’re going to fall and then how fast he’s going to run. And then … you chase him in the camera car and he’s running and they’re releasing these bags and falling and hitting all around him,” said Cregger.

However, visual effects can often come with risks, especially when dealing with heavy, time-sensitive objects. Cregger brought up the story of an effect that triggered before they were ready, narrowly missing Abrams by inches.

“One triggered too early and it missed him by inches,” Cregger told Horner. “And these things are all like 150 pounds. It would’ve killed him. If he had been like one step to the right, he would have died. And it’s in the movie, so it’s f**king worth it. I was pretty stoked. I was like, ‘Oh, could we do that again?’ They’re like, ‘No, we can’t do that again, he almost died!'”

Resident Evil wasn’t originally going to be directed by Cregger

“It’s cool, man. I mean, that’s what’s so great about making movies is like, you have this scene, you have this amazing kind of, you know, idea in your head, and then you just have all these people help you realize that idea and, like, immortalize it on the screen. And there’s a real sense of like, you know, teamwork and accomplishment,” he said.

When reminded about a prior conversation where Cregger said he didn’t plan on directing Resident Evil, Cregger effusively recalled how he never thought he’d be the one in the director’s chair.

“I knew that this was going to be way more expensive. It’s a valuable property, Resident Evil, it has value as a brand. And I was like, they’re not going to trust me with with something like that. That’s fine. And so I was able to write it kind of like, who gives a sh*t? I’m not making this movie. So I’m going to write my favorite Resident Evil thing. I was going to write it. I don’t care, which is the best attitude you can have when you’re writing, is to not care.”

The fortuitousness of being able to be at the helm for a personal beloved game is not lost on Cregger, who still can’t believe he’s the one behind it.

“Then what happens is, as you write that way, you start to fall in love with what you’re writing. And so when I was done with that, I was like, ‘F**k, I really hope I can be the one to direct this movie.’ And luckily they trusted me with it.”

Resident Evil hits theaters September 18, 2026.

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