George A. Romero’s Resident Evil (2025) Review: A Reasonably Fascinating Inside Look at the Unmade Resident Evil Movie
Zombie movies are indebted to a particular New York filmmaker named George A. Romero and some time ago, he was originally enlisted to write and direct Capcom’s famous horror video game series Resident Evil. Well, if you followed the news in the past, it didn’t turn out well as expected and disappointed many fans. This documentary is here to talk about how George A. Romero’s Resident Evil fell apart in the first place.
But anyone expecting this to be a two-hour worth of in-depth details and trivia surrounding Romero’s unrealised project, has to wait for a little over half an hour before director Brandon Salisbury, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Robbie McGregor dives straight to the very topic. It’s not that the first 30 minutes are wasted here as the documentary begins with a brief introduction of Romero’s history from childhood before he got his big break directing the seminal 1968 black-and-white Night of the Living Dead, the movie that gave birth to a then-new genre called zombie horror.
Some of the movies in Romero’s filmography including The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977) and of course, Dawn of the Dead (1978) are mentioned here. The latter, of course, was one of the key films of the ’70s era that also became a big hit at the time of its release. Those who are familiar with Romero’s movies will know how the renowned filmmaker loves to incorporate subtle social commentary into his movies, namely the 1960s racial tension reflected in Night of the Living Dead. Or how consumerism and greed dominate the otherwise violent and gory Dawn of the Dead.
Soon, the documentary talks about the Resident Evil game and how it was first started. We learn that a senior producer at Capcom, Tokuro Fujiwara expressed his desire to remake the 1989 video game Sweet Home by using it as a main inspiration for Resident Evil (or Biohazard in its native Japan) back in 1993. Long story short, the Resident Evil game became a huge success after it was released in 1996 and Capcom’s ultimate goal later on is to create a franchise out of it.
A follow-up was immediately greenlit around 1996 and a year later, a German film production company Constantin Film, best known for producing The Neverending Story in 1984 purchased the film rights and commissioned Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers‘ Alan B. McElroy to write a screenplay. The initial journey of turning the Resident Evil game into a big-screen feature hits a couple of roadblocks over the years with multiple script revisions, rejections and whatnot along the way.
When the news finally arrived that Romero was attached to the film adaptation, it felt like a dream come true for hiring the godfather of the zombie cinema himself. A perfect choice and besides, it wasn’t the first time Romero got involved in a Resident Evil project, given his prior direction of a live-action commercial made to promote the Resident Evil 2 game.
Going by the Japanese title of Project Biohazard 2, the commercial features The Client‘s Brad Renfro as Leon Kennedy and Adrienne Frantz as Claire Redfield with Evil Dead 2 Peter Deming served as the cinematographer and veteran special effects artist Screaming Mad George of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors fame was enlisted to do the zombie makeup effects.
By 1998, the same year when Resident Evil 2 became a bigger hit than its predecessor, Capcom decided to prioritise the film adaptation. Romero’s script was said to follow closely to the game with a few tweaks here and there. But with the director himself already passed away in 2017 due to lung cancer at the age of 77, that means we didn’t get a new interview from him other than relying on the archive footage. Imagine if he’s still alive at the time of George A. Romero’s Resident Evil released this year, we might be getting more fresh insights from him to be included in this documentary.
Still, it’s nice to know the documentary spilling out details regarding how Romero’s screenplay would sound through an in-depth analysis, which is frankly a lot better than a certain Paul W.S. Anderson’s eventual 2002 version that irked many fans of the games. While Anderson’s Resident Evil and its subsequent follow-ups somehow managed to make money at the worldwide box office, it remains one of those greatest what-if scenarios if George A. Romero’s version came to fruition.
