ABOUT

RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY

2021
|
Action
,
Horror

Returning to the origins of the massively popular RESIDENT EVIL franchise, fan and filmmaker Johannes Roberts brings the games to life for a whole new generation of fans. In RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland…with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.

Contstantin Film
Screen Gems, a Sony Company

Capcom Resident Evil Village Game
Capcom Resident Evil Village Game

RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY FAQs

  1. What is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City? 
    Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a 2021 action horror film written and directed by Johannes Roberts. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing through its Screen Gems label, the film is the seventh live-action installment in the Resident Evil film series and a complete reboot of the franchise, set in its own continuity separate from the six-film Alice saga directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Roberts based the film directly on the first two Capcom video games, Resident Evil (1996) and Resident Evil 2 (1998), drawing tonal inspiration from John Carpenter's horror films to bring back the slow-burn dread of the original survival horror games.
  2. When does the story take place? 
    Set in 1998, the film takes place over a single rain-soaked night in Raccoon City, a dying Midwestern industrial town that the once-dominant Umbrella Corporation has largely abandoned, quietly relocating its operations and leaving the population behind to drink contaminated groundwater. As the T-virus seeps into the water supply, the residents of Raccoon City have been slowly mutating without realizing it, and on this particular night the outbreak finally tips into full collapse. The story splits between two iconic Capcom locations: the remote Spencer Mansion on the edge of town, where members of the S.T.A.R.S. unit are sent to investigate a string of disappearances, and the Raccoon Police Department downtown, where the city's dwindling police force finds itself trapped as the dead begin to walk.
  3. Who are the main characters? 
    The film centers on Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), a young woman who returns to Raccoon City after years away to warn her estranged brother about what Umbrella has been doing to the town; Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), her brother and a member of the elite S.T.A.R.S. tactical unit assigned to the Raccoon Police Department; and Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Chris's S.T.A.R.S. partner. They are joined by Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper), the S.T.A.R.S. team leader with hidden ties to Umbrella; Leon S. Kennedy (Avan Jogia), a rookie police officer on his disastrous first night on the job; Brian Irons (Donal Logue), Raccoon City's corrupt police chief; and Dr. William Birkin (Neal McDonough), Umbrella's lead scientist. Lily Gao appears in a mid-credits scene as Ada Wong.
  4. Who is Dr. William Birkin? 
    Dr. William Birkin (Neal McDonough) is the central scientific antagonist of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City: the lead Umbrella Corporation researcher stationed in Raccoon City, who has spent years developing the T-virus and its more advanced successor, the G-virus. As Umbrella prepares to abandon Raccoon City and destroy the evidence of its experiments, Birkin refuses to surrender his life's work and instead injects himself with the G-virus to keep the formula out of the company's hands. The injection triggers a horrific physical mutation that transforms Birkin into a steadily evolving biological weapon, leading to a series of escalating monster confrontations as the survivors fight to escape the city. Standing behind Birkin's experiments is the larger machinery of the Umbrella Corporation itself, whose decades of negligence and bioweapons research have set the entire night's catastrophe in motion.
  5. How does this film connect to the broader Resident Evil franchise? 
    Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a standalone reboot of the Resident Evil film series, set in its own continuity separate from the six-film arc directed by Paul W. S. Anderson with Milla Jovovich, which ran from Resident Evil (2002) through Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016). The reboot is closer in tone and plot to the original Capcom games than the earlier films, returning to the source material's 1998 setting and adapting the storylines of the first two games. Paul W. S. Anderson serves as an executive producer for the film.  
  6. Who are the cast and filmmakers behind Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City? 
    Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is written and directed by Johannes Roberts. The film is produced by Robert Kulzer, James Harris, and Hartley Gorenstein, with Martin Moszkowicz, Victor Hadida, Jeremy Bolt, and Paul W. S. Anderson serving as executive producers. Cinematography is by Maxime Alexandre, with an original score by Mark Korven. The cast includes Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, Neal McDonough, and Lily Gao.
  7. Where can I watch Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City? 
    Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is available through major digital retailers, including Apple TV, Prime Video, Fandango, DIRECTV, and Sony Pictures Core.