Movies
‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’ Trailer Breakdown – The Game Nods and References Explained
Director Johannes Roberts promised to bring the franchise back to the horror roots of the video game series with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. The official trailer released today confirms that he wasn’t exaggerating; it’s packed to the brim with fan service moments, characters, and nods to Capcom’s classic Resident Evil games.
“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, the townspeople are forever…changed…and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.”
The cast includes Kaya Scodelario (Crawl) as Claire Redfield alongside Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp) as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell (Upload) as Chris Redfield, Tom Hopper (The Umbrella Academy) as Albert Wesker, Avan Jogia (Zombieland: Double Tap) as Leon S. Kennedy, and Neal McDonough (Yellowstone) as William Birkin.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City heads to theaters on November 24, looking to kickstart a new universe inspired by the games. And based on the brief trailer drop, they’re leaning in hard on the game series for inspiration.
We broke down some of the most significant game moments from the trailer.
The Date – September 30, 1998.
The trailer opens with a date card of September 30, 1998. Fans of Resident Evil 2 will recognize this as the date on which most of the game’s events occur. The trailer places Welcome to Raccoon City directly in the timeline of Resident Evil 2, which makes sense considering that Claire seems to be the lead and driving force of this reboot.
The Infected Truck Driver
In RE2, an unnamed truck driver gets attacked at a gas station near Raccoon City on the night of Tuesday, 29 September. He’s unaware that he’s been infected with the T-Virus and keeps driving his rig until he succumbs to infection, loses control, and crashes the rig near the police station.
The Ashford Twins
Resident Evil 2 might be the prominent influence on this movie, but The Ashford Twins first appeared in Resident Evil CODE: Veronica. Alexia and Alfred were modified clones, but Alexia injected herself with the t-Veronica virus, eventually causing mutations. In the trailer, it appears that the movie will connect them with William Birkin.
Lisa Trevor
Much like the Ashford Twins reel that appears in the trailer, a file with Lisa Trevor’s name also pops up, connecting her to Birkin. In the Resident Evil remake video game, Lisa Trevor was a new addition with a tragic story. Along with her parents, she was detained at the Spencer Mansion and subjected to testing with the Progenitor Virus. Only Lisa survived, but it mutated her and regressed her mental facilities.
Resident Evil’s Iconic Zombie Encounter
The trailer pays homage to that iconic slow reveal of the video game’s first zombie encounter, found in a hallway munching on flesh.
“Itchy Tasty”
In the original game, the player discovers a diary by the animal keeper, an Umbrella employee assigned to care for the t-Virus creatures. The keeper gets infected, and the diary entries are increasingly disturbing. The keeper’s mental unraveling and subsequent hunger for flesh results in a terrifying but memorable entry that reads, “Itchy Tasty.” In the trailer, this appears in blood on the glass.
William Birkin, is that you?
William Birkin was a virologist and Umbrella employee in the games, but a lethal falling out resulted in Birkin injecting himself with the G-Virus. He sought out his blood relation, daughter Sherry, as a viable carrier for his parasitic larvae, and his continued mutations made him a massive thorn in the player’s side. He was the final boss for Claire Redfield, which looks to be the case in the movie. The tell-tale indicators? The extra eyeballs on the shoulder area.
Licker in the police station
The trailer closes with another massive dose of fan service; the first encounter between Leon Kennedy and the wall-crawling creatures dubbed Lickers.
That still doesn’t touch on the locations, ammo storage, R.P.D. gear, helicopter crashes, and iconic imagery straight out of the game.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City appears to be a feast for fans of the games.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.