Editorials
Bring Back The Live Action ‘Resident Evil’
Now I know a lot of you are probably scoffing already, with memories of the cheese laden introduction to the first Resident Evil way back in 96. Be that as it may, it contributed immensely in making the first game the memorable horror experience it was, bridging the gap between B-grade horror cinema and the brave new world of A-grade horror gaming.
An Editorial By Clark Thompson
When I first sat down to try this ground breaking, genre paving masterpiece of mind numbing dialogue, gory mayhem, and all around creepiness, the intro blew me away. There simply wasn’t much like it at the time; not in good games anyway. Having real flesh and blood people, who weren’t notable actors, to attach to the in-game counterparts, made them feel much more real within the context of the game.
The effects weren’t perfect. The editing was suspect. And Jesus Christ, the acting. But with the buckets of blood, eerie music and the overall concept at work, it has mounds more character than some of the CG work that would later come down the pipe. If you compare the uncut original intro with the CG representation from the 2002 remake, the difference is night and day. Sure, the remake gave the sequence a more competent feel, but it was more akin to a mature children’s cartoon than the blood bath of 96. I craved that horror film turned video game element from the original.
Today, it wouldn’t even have to be cheesy. It could actually be something quite engaging. Just imagine the possibilities with how far green screen work has come, combined with the high production values of triple AAA titles like Resident Evil. It could be the closest thing to an actual Resident Evil film that we ever get, taking it back from the absolutely dreadful offerings from Paul W. S. Anderson. Hell, they pretty much filmed the entirely of Resident Evil 5‘s story sequences with real actors, if only to lend realism to the computer generated versions.
I remember it took me a little while to accept it, as it just didn’t feel the same, but as I said, I soon learned to appreciate this new direction of purely computer generated terror. Also, considering the sheer scope of some of the later sequences, the original approach simply wouldn’t have been feasible at that time. That’s changed.
And with all the influence this series has garnered from the world of horror cinema, making the games a hybrid film experience just seems right to me. Just for fun, let’s take a look at some of the more stand out elements from the early titles in the series that were influenced by popular, and not so popular horror cinema.
Well, the first thing that comes to mind would have to be the series’ self destructing facility routine. It’s hard to pinpoint a single inspiration for this story element, as it’s happened in too many films to name. There were a few clear nods to classic films in Resident Evil 2 however, that are very easy to pinpoint. Like how good old William Birkin would inject an embryo into the mouths of his victims, for it to later burst out when matured enough to survive on its own, a la Alien.
Another scene involving a giant alligator spun two different films together, Alligator, which oddly enough was about a giant mutated alligator roaming a city’s sewage system, and Jaws. You release a canister of highly explosive contents onto the ground for the gator to chew on, blasting it at just the right moment to take the top of its head clean off. “Smile you son of a..”. Feeling like you were playing a movie, for me at least, was a huge part of the enjoyment in Resident Evil, and I always loved spotting these little inclusions. I just missed the actors.
This came into play right from the beginning in Resident Evil with the Tyrant. To say this one came from an unlikely and obscure source would be putting it lightly. The original inspiration for this popular story mechanic came from a 1976 slasher flick called Grizzly. When the film reaches its conclusion, a lone park ranger faces off against a gigantic killer bear. When multiple rifle rounds fail to do the job and certain doom is impending, the ranger runs back to his helicopter, grabs a rocket launcher, readies the weapon, and takes the shot. The grizzly is subsequently blown to smithereens.
Resident Evil is a hybrid experience, and even though it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen again, I truly think a return to the use of live action sequences would serve to greatly reinvigorate the immersion element of the series.
Let’s face it, if ever there was a time to try something like this, it’s now. With the immense popularity of zombie films in the mainstream, along with ridiculously popular shows like The Walking Dead, I could see a genuine attempt being very well received indeed. I do realize a similar cinematic feat could also be accomplished to great effect with excellent CG, but for me It just won’t be right until we’ve got some actors and props up on that screen.
Clark Thompson is a 31-year-old horror fanatic currently residing in Kelowna B.C. His main goals in life are to one day experience a zombie apocolypse,and/or undergo surgery to have his heart mounted on the exterior of his chest. You can reach him at clarkthomspon@yahoo.ca or on facebook Clorkwork Torange.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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