Is The New ‘Resident Evil’ Connected To The Previous Movies?
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil (2026) is a far cry from his past film Weapons (2025), as it not only breaks his non-linear storytelling style but is also heavily inspired by the iconic survival horror video game series. While we follow a medical courier's efforts to survive a zombie outbreak in Raccoon City, it raises many questions about setting.
Bearing that this is, at its foundation, a video game movie, the main question is whether Resident Evil will be set in the world of the games or even connect to past films. While there is a clear-cut answer, there's also some grey area that makes this outing incredibly unique.
Is the New ‘Resident Evil’ Movie a Sequel or Prequel?
Before Resident Evil, there were two attempts to bring the iconic video game franchise to live-action on the big screen. The first was Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil (2002), starring Milla Jovovich, and spanned a total of six films. The problem with these is that they used characters from the games but changed the core themes of the game series too much.
The second attempt was Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), which suffered from the opposite issues of the past series in trying to connect to the games too much. As a result, there were misrepresented characters and a story that tried to cram two games into one.
Cregger's Resident Evil offers something totally new by not tying to do what either of these films did and instead forging its own path as a story that leans more into the spirit of the games. In doing so, it ensures fans won't try to connect to the overall lore too much but will relate to the dangers the main character encounters.
Is ‘Resident Evil’ Tied to a Specific Game?
Where the dissection between the movies feels evident with this new Resident Evil film, its connections to the game world have created much more curiosity because there are amazing characters we would love to see, like Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. But Cregger has stated before that he's not trying to set the story in a specific game narrative.
According to Cregger on Empire Magazine, "To try and shoehorn in any of those characters would feel inorganic to this self-contained story." As a result, we've already seen some narrative inconsistencies from the film. For starters, the Raccoon City outbreak happened in late September 1998. But in this film, the setting is in the snow in the modern day.
That said, this world is still very much tied to the lore of Resident Evil, but through the eyes of an everyman. Cregger stated the main character, Bryan, "... is very much an everyman who happens to be burdened with this kind of sacred mission that's going to take him into the heart of everything. It's like Frodo going into Mordor." Because of this, we are due for a story that feels like Resident Evil but is free from expectations in terms of canon.
Why Zach Cregger's ‘Resident Evil’ Works on Its Own
Unfortunately, when adapting an iconic franchise, there are a lot of eyes trying to find holes in the narrative to justify its accuracy. With Resident Evil, there are decades of stories and intricate narratives, so trying to adapt it from the ground up is next to impossible. Either studios adapt it perfectly or try something different.
In the case of Zach Cregger and Resident Evil, he's opted to try something different that has everything you love about the series. What results is a story similar to Resident Evil VII: Biohazard, where a normal guy is thrust into a world he has no business being in. It feels like a departure but is still very much a familiar environment.
Yes, the settings are new, and the connections to the films are non-existent, but this Resident Evil story has the potential to honor the games better than any other attempt. The reason for that is that it captures the tension of trying to live with few resources during the franchise's most iconic outbreak. Then there's the horror of realizing your little world is much bigger and much more terrifying than you could ever imagine, and you may not make it out.
