Resident Evil- Welcome To Raccoon City -
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) is a gritty, horror-centric reboot that trades the high-octane spectacle of previous films for a dark, atmospheric trip back to the series' roots. Directed by Johannes Roberts, the film attempts a massive feat: merging the plots of the first two video games into a single, terrifying night. A Love Letter to the Source Material
Unlike the previous Paul W.S. Anderson films, which drifted into original sci-fi territory, Welcome to Raccoon City leans heavily into fan service:
Game-Accurate Sets: The Spencer Mansion and the Raccoon Police Department (RPD) were built to match the games' layouts, creating a deep sense of nostalgia for players.
Iconic Moments: The film recreates famous cutscenes almost frame-for-frame, such as the first zombie encounter in the mansion.
Deep Lore: It introduces characters previously ignored by live-action adaptations, most notably the tragic, malformed Lisa Trevor. The Dual Narrative The story splits between two groups of survivors:
If there is one area where Welcome to Raccoon City is an undeniable triumph, it is the aesthetic. This movie looks like the games.
Roberts utilizes a distinct 1998 aesthetic—grainy film stock, muted colors, and an overwhelming sense of dampness. When the characters enter the Spencer Mansion, the production design team deserves a standing ovation. The hallways are recognizable, the dining room is perfectly staged, and the lighting creates that specific feeling of dread that players felt in 1996.
There are shots in this film that are direct one-to-one recreations of game footage. The famous shot of the zombie turning its head to look at the camera? Check. The lickers crawling across the R.P.D. precinct ceiling? Check. Even the trucks crashing in the opening sequence mirror the intro of Resident Evil 2.
This isn't just fan service; it's world-building. The film understands that Resident Evil isn't about kung-fu fighting in a laser hallway; it's about being trapped in a location where you don't have enough ammo, the doors are locked, and you need a specific crest to get out.
For all its faithfulness to the aesthetic, the film takes massive liberties with the timeline and the logic of the virus.
Purists will likely grind their teeth at the way the outbreaks happen simultaneously. In the lore, the Mansion incident happens months before the city falls. By compressing this into a single night, the film loses the creeping paranoia of Umbrella’s cover-up.
Furthermore, the explanation of the T-Virus is muddled. The film leans heavily into the idea that the virus is meant to "save" humanity (an X-Men style mutation allegory) rather than just being a bio-weapon accident. The ending, involving a CGI-heavy truck chase and a reset button, feels rushed and slightly anti-climactic compared to the slow-burn horror of the first two acts.
The first thing you notice is the aesthetic. Anderson’s films were sleek, sterile, and painted in shades of blue and black. Roberts’ film is filthy. It is cold. The titular Raccoon City is not a bustling metropolis; it is a dying, impoverished company town. The streets are perpetually slick with rain. The Raccoon City Police Department (RPD) station is exactly as the game designers drew it—a converted art museum with ornate ceilings, grandfather clocks, and inexplicably placed wooden shutters. It feels lived-in, corrupt, and utterly hopeless.
Roberts masterfully leans into the "late 90s" setting. The film takes place in 1998, and it stinks of it. CRT televisions, payphones, and a soundtrack that hums with the industrial disquiet of the era create a sensory time capsule. This isn't a glossy superhero romp; it feels like a movie John Carpenter might have made if he were given a $25 million budget and a stack of PlayStation discs.
Most importantly, the horror is horizontal. The zombies in this film are not runners; they are the slow, shambling, Romero-esque terrors of the original game. A single zombie chewing on a corpse in a dark hallway poses a genuine threat. The film understands that tension is derived from lack of ammo, not abundance. When Claire Redfield scavenges for handgun clips, you feel the desperation. Resident Evil- Welcome to Raccoon City
Roberts is a horror director first, and it shows. Welcome to Raccoon City is surprisingly violent and deeply unsettling in its first hour. The film utilizes a mix of practical makeup effects for the zombies—rotting flesh, cloudy eyes, that specific lurch—and CGI only for the more outlandish monsters.
The highlight? The Licker.
During a tense sequence in the RPD corridors, the film delivers a masterclass in suspense. The Licker is introduced slowly: first the sound of claws on the ceiling, then a glimpse of a brain, then the full, terrifying creature. It moves with a jerky, unnatural speed that feels lifted directly from the 1998 cutscenes.
However, the film is not perfect. The third act descends into CGI chaos during the final Tyrant (Mr. X) showdown. While the Tyrant’s design is ripped straight from the game—trench coat, claw, relentless walk—the lighting becomes murky, and the tension of the man in the coat gives way to the fatigue of the digital monster.
In the sprawling, CGI-laden shadow of Paul W.S. Anderson’s six-film franchise—a run that turned Milla Jovovich into a super-powered goddess and zombies into bullet-points on an action movie checklist—fans of Capcom’s seminal survival horror series had long since given up hope of seeing a faithful adaptation. For two decades, Hollywood treated Resident Evil as a vehicle for slow-motion gun-fu and mono-syllabic villains. The Spencer Mansion, the crimson heads, the oppressive dread of running out of ink ribbons—these were sacrificed for explosion budgets.
Then came 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Directed by Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down), this reboot made a bold promise: We are going back to the 90s. We are going back to the game.
The result is a film that is polarizing, messy, and gloriously, terrifyingly faithful. For every misstep, there is a moment of pure, uncanny brilliance that makes long-time fans sit up straight in their seats. This is not a story of heroes; it is a story of survivors trapped in a town that has already died.
So, is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City a perfect movie? No. The pacing is uneven, the script tries to cram too much lore into 107 minutes, and some character interpretations will divide the fanbase.
However, is it a good Resident Evil movie? Yes.
It is the first film in the franchise's history that feels like it was made by people who actually played the games. It captures the isolation, the frustration of locked doors, the terror of limited resources, and the campy fun of the dialogue. It swaps the high-octane action of the 2000s for the survival horror atmosphere of the 2010s remakes.
If you go in expecting a cinematic masterpiece, you might be disappointed. But if you go in wanting to see the Spencer Mansion realized in live-action, wanting to see Leon struggle with a flamethrower, and wanting to hear the iconic "Itchy Tasty" diary entry read aloud, this movie is a treasure.
It is a spooky, bloody, flawed, and incredibly fun romp through Raccoon City. It proves that sometimes, the scariest thing isn't the monster in the hallway—it's the feeling that you’ve been here before, and you’re just happy to be back.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Green Herbs.
Did you prefer the action-heavy Anderson films or the horror-focused reboot? Let me know in the comments below! Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) is
Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, this film serves as a reboot of the Resident Evil cinematic franchise. Unlike the Paul W.S. Anderson/Milla Jovovich films (which were action-heavy sci-fi vehicles), Welcome to Raccoon City aims to be a faithful adaptation of the first two video games (Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2), focusing on horror, atmosphere, and the original characters.
Resident Evil – Welcome to Raccoon City returns to the franchise’s survival-horror roots, ditching the glossy action beats of the recent film adaptations for a grittier, creepier reimagining of the series’ foundational games. Director Johannes Roberts channels classic 1990s horror and game-era atmosphere to deliver a faithful, occasionally sluggish, but often effective homage to the original Resident Evil 1 and 2.
Premise and tone
Faithfulness to the games
Performances
Horror and visuals
Narrative and pacing
What works
What doesn’t
Verdict Resident Evil – Welcome to Raccoon City is a love letter to the early games that largely succeeds on atmosphere, design, and tense set pieces. It’s not a perfect transition to film—its ambition to condense sprawling game narratives into a single movie leads to pacing and character depth issues—but for fans craving a faithful, grisly return to survival-horror aesthetics, it’s a satisfying, occasionally chilling ride.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City – A Gritty Reset for the Survival Horror Icon
For decades, the Resident Evil franchise has defined survival horror in gaming. However, its cinematic history has been a polarizing journey. While Paul W.S. Anderson’s hexalogy was a box-office juggernaut, it drifted far from the eerie, claustrophobic roots of the Capcom source material. Enter Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a film designed specifically for the fans who grew up clutching a PlayStation controller in a dark room.
Directed by Johannes Roberts, this 2021 reboot ignores the superhuman antics of the previous films, choosing instead to strip the narrative back to its 1990s urban-decay beginnings. Returning to the Source: The Plot
The film is an ambitious mashup of the first two games in the series. Set in 1998, it follows two parallel threads that eventually collide in the shadows of a dying Midwestern town. If there is one area where Welcome to
The Spencer Mansion (Resident Evil 1): We follow the STARS Alpha Team—including Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Albert Wesker—as they investigate a mysterious disappearance at a remote estate.
The Raccoon City Police Department (Resident Evil 2): Meanwhile, Claire Redfield returns to the city to warn her brother about Umbrella Corporation’s sinister experiments, teaming up with rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy as the city descends into a viral nightmare.
By merging these two iconic stories, Roberts attempts to create a "greatest hits" experience of the franchise’s most terrifying moments. Atmosphere and Aesthetic: The 90s Grime
One of the film’s greatest strengths is its commitment to the 90s aesthetic. Gone are the high-tech, sterile laboratories of the earlier films. In their place is a Raccoon City that feels like a decaying Rust Belt town.
The lighting is oppressive, the corridors of the RPD are cavernous and haunting, and the Spencer Mansion feels genuinely ancient. This "low-fi" approach to horror brings a tactile sense of dread that mirrors the fixed-camera tension of the original games. From the flickering neon of an arcade to the "Itchy, Tasty" Easter eggs hidden in the background, the film is a love letter to the era that birthed the series. A New Take on Iconic Characters
The casting of Welcome to Raccoon City took a grounded approach, focusing on character dynamics rather than just visual carbon copies.
Kaya Scodelario brings a hardened, conspiratorial edge to Claire Redfield.
Robbie Amell portrays Chris Redfield as a loyal, if somewhat blind, soldier of the town he calls home.
Avan Jogia’s Leon S. Kennedy is a significant departure—portrayed here as a hungover, slightly out-of-his-depth rookie, providing a more human (and often humorous) perspective compared to the action-hero version of the games. Why It Matters to Fans
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City isn't trying to be a sprawling sci-fi epic. It’s a survival horror film through and through. It prioritizes practical-looking creature effects—from the skinless Lickers to the tragic transformation of Lisa Trevor—and leans heavily into the "trapped" sensation that made the games famous.
While the condensed timeline means some plot points move at breakneck speed, the film succeeds in capturing the mood of Resident Evil. It understands that the horror comes from the unknown lurking in a dark hallway and the realization that the corporation meant to protect the world is actually its greatest predator. The Verdict
For those tired of the "Matrix-style" action of previous iterations, Welcome to Raccoon City offers a refreshing, muddy, and violent alternative. It’s a film made for the people who know what "STARS" stands for and who still have nightmares about the first zombie head-turn in the Spencer Mansion.
It’s not just a zombie movie; it’s a homecoming to the roots of survival horror.
Should we dive into a comparison of the monster designs between the film and the original games?