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‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’ trailer feel familiar? 6 terrifying shots ripped from the games
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City — the upcoming live-action Resident Evil reboot — is heading our way on Nov. 24., and Sony finally showed off a trailer for the movie that is loaded with Easter eggs from the first two video games.
The film — which stars Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, and Neal McDonough trying to fight off the zombies popping up in their town — is an homage to the first two Resident Evil video games.
Director Johannes Roberts made that clear even before we saw any footage, and this trailer — along with the international version that has some additional footage — further confirms that Return to Raccoon City will be rife with nods to the original games, which came out in 1996 and 1998. So in case it's been a decade or two since you revisited those original survival horror games, we've pulled together a few of the nods to help jog your memory.
Here are six moments from the trailer(s) that feel like they were pulled almost directly from scenes from those first two video games, and they'll put you right back into that OG Playstation horror mindset.
Back to Spencer Mansion
The trailer includes a shot of Spencer Mansion, the place in the first Resident Evil game where Umbrella Pharmaceuticals conducted illegal bioweapons research and created zombies in the process. The shot here is almost identical to the one in the game.
Raccoon Police Department
The Raccoon Police Department played a major part in the events of Resident Evil 2, and we get a peek at the station a couple of times in the trailer, including when a tank truck crashes into it. It looks like that iconic locale will also factor into the film.
The Infected Truck Driver
Speaking of that truck, the image of a zombie-infected truck driver crashing into the police department is a nod toward the beginning of Resident Evil 2. In the game’s opening scene, the driver gets into his truck after a brawl with an infected dude. As he drives away, the driver also becomes infected and crashes in Raccoon City. In the international trailer, we also see the truck driver with Claire Redfield (Scodelario) right before he becomes zombie-fied.
Very bad zombie dogs
Man’s best friend can sadly become zombies too in the Resident Evil world. In the games, zombie dogs show up in Resident Evil 2 and are prove of the most terrifying and deadly challenges. We find out in the international trailer, however, that one zombie dog — the pup that belonged to the truck driver — came to be by slurping up the blood from the zombie his owner runs over before he becomes a zombie himself and ends up in Raccoon City.
The 'Turning Around Zombie' reveal
The trailer also has a shot of the gang inside Spencer Mansion trying to get answers. They stumble across a guy in a lab coat hunched over something. When that guy turns around, we see a very hungry, very frightening zombie. This image is almost identical to the first zombie we see in the Resident Evil video game.
The Licker
The trailer also gives us plenty of looks at a Licker, a creature we first saw in Resident Evil 2. A Licker used to be a person who experienced not one, but two major mutations. Lickers don’t look very human-like anymore — their brains are exposed for all to see, their eyes are basically gone, and they have long tongues (hence the name, Licker). They are also, in a word, horrifying.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City premieres in theaters on Nov. 24, 2021.
