SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “Resident Evil,” now playing in theaters.
There’s not a moment in “Resident Evil” where star Austin Abrams isn’t making you laugh, scream or feel bad for the zombie-infested nightmare his character Bryan finds himself in. For almost the entire 95-minute runtime, he’s either running, shooting or getting covered in gore from various undead monsters, like a rat-filled behemoth, a roly-poly ball of bodies or an acid-puking fiend. After teaming with director Zach Cregger on last year’s horror hit “Weapons,” Abrams takes center stage in “Resident Evil” and proves he’s more than capable of leading a feature on his own.
Based on the popular horror video game series, “Resident Evil” tells a fully original story with some nods to the original source material that fans will love. Abrams plays a bumbling medical courier who finds out his girlfriend is pregnant, but agrees to one last delivery before heading home. He must make his way to a hospital in Raccoon City (which is ground zero for the zombie outbreak in the games) to drop off a mysterious package, but the snowy drive is far from easy. Almost immediately, he hits a strange woman with his car, then buckles her in and starts driving her to the hospital without realizing she’s slowly turning into a zombie. They get pulled over by a cop and things quickly go awry. Bryan is able to escape to a nearby farmhouse, but the woman doesn’t stop pursuing him for the entire movie.
Bryan finds a shotgun at the farm to defend himself, but he realizes the undead creatures will stop at nothing to kill him. After blasting apart the woman and an infected farmer, their bodies fuse together with stringy tendrils from inside each of them. Bryan books it out of there and gets picked up by some scientists from the Umbrella Corporation (an evil institution from the games) who explain that the package he’s delivering contains an antidote to the zombie virus.
Along the way, Bryan gets bit by a zombie but hides the wound, which slowly infects him. As his condition worsens, he makes it to the Raccoon City hospital, but he doesn’t get the chance to use the antidote. He transforms into a gigantic, tentacled monstrosity in the Umbrella Corporation lab and rips apart the scientists trying to save the world. With their bodies fused to his own, the monstrous Bryan roars atop the hospital as a military helicopter takes aim at him.
With Variety, Abrams discusses how he transformed into the monster, the cold and messy shooting conditions he endured and the one scene the “Resident Evil” team couldn’t allow him to film.
©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
How did you find the right sound for Bryan’s scream? You really go all out, and it’s played for laughs but also works for a horror movie. Is it similar to your real scream?
There wasn’t a method behind that. It’s just letting all inhibitions down and not trying to look or sound cool and just letting it come out. I can’t tell you that it was weeks of labored work trying to figure it out. I don’t know the last time a scream naturally came out, so I’m not really sure. Whatever it is is what felt right, especially in the moment for the character. It was something where you didn’t know what was gonna what come out. You don’t want to know. It’s better to just like feel it and let whatever happens happen.
If Bryan isn’t screaming then he’s usually muttering “fuck!” under his breath. Are you muttering or talking to yourself like that in real life?
I don’t know if I can say I’m muttering “fuck, fuck” all the time. It was relatively easy thinking about the situation that you’re in at the time. In my daily life, god, that would mean something was really wrong if you did that all the time in your regular life. Those are signs that things are not going well. Please, if that’s happening, something needs to change.
I was not expecting you to turn into a monster at the end of the movie. What was your first reaction to reading that surprising moment in the script?
That’s what I love about Zach’s work. He’s willing to take those risks and kill off the person that you’re following the whole time — and not just that, have them ruin everything that they were just fighting for. It definitely was surprising, and also tragic. Everything that this character went through, the change that he has, how he feels with his girlfriend and all this sacrifice is essentially for nothing. It tells the story of why this virus got out and continued to go out and that there was this possibility of it being fixed. I think it’s a cool origin story.
How much of your monster form was practical vs. CGI and other special effects?
A lot of it was capturing it. It would be hard to build a suit like that. It was kind of a mixture. It’s definitely me, and there’s definitely some stuff they put on my face. I don’t know how they would add all the other different people on me and stuff like that. I don’t know what they fully keep as you or not. But we definitely went through the actions of it.
What kind of direction was Cregger giving you during the monster fight at the end? What was going through your head?
What’s going through your head is I look like a fucking idiot right now. It’s so funny because the thing with all that stuff is you can feel dumb, but the less you commit to it, the dumber you look. So actually, the more you commit to it, the more people are just like, “Whoa, that looks cool.” But you know, “More monster.” He would say that a lot. “More roar. Scarier. Monster more. Keep monstering. Don’t stop monstering. Come on, imagine you’re a big, scary monster.” I don’t know, I’m fucking making shit up right now. It was fun. I can’t remember specific notes. A lot of it was just playing around in in this open space and imagining stuff.
The movie ends with Bryan facing off against a military helicopter. Do you have an idea of what happens to him after? Is that something you’d want to see explored in another movie?
I don’t know. I’m not sure. I really don’t know. Whatever you want, you want it to be best for the story, and I love Zach. But beyond that, I just don’t know. I don’t want to put in some sort of theories about things.
The other big part of the movie is Bryan’s relationship with his pregnant girlfriend Michelle, who we never see in person. Who voiced her, and did you ever meet in person or was it just a voice on the phone?
I think that’s Zach’s wife Sara [Paxton]. We had someone else at the time. She wasn’t where we were shooting at the time, so it’d be too hard to try to patch a call and then it drops out and gets unreliable. We had someone else reading it, but I think he knew he wanted to put Sara in as a fun kind of Easter egg.
Did you create any more backstory for his and Michele’s relationship than what we see in the movie?
Yeah, to some degree. There was a coming up with that just for myself, but I don’t know how deeply Zach and I went into it at the time. But it’s something that you need to know to make a full person that feels like there’s dimensions behind what you’re seeing.
How cold was it shooting in Prague?
Everyday is kind of up and down, but there were days where it was definitely quite cold. I don’t mind that stuff though. There were day where it was this kind of rain that would then freeze to your jacket. So then you’d be covered in this outer layer of ice. But I enjoy that stuff. There were some days where we thankfully got real snow, which was pretty awesome, like fully blanketed. The farmhouse stuff is mostly actual snow that was happening. The temperature was also all in Celsius, which I cannot remember. There were a couple days that everyone was particularly having a tough time. But, whatever, man, it’s just temperature.
How do you push through the cold when you’re shooting and not let it affect you?
You just feel it. You let it be a part of the thing. But like I said, it’s not really a big deal. It’s just cold. You know who was concerned was the woman in the dress playing the pedestrian. If there’s anyone to be concerned it was her because she had to do scenes where she was having to lay down in the snow. She was really a killer and not complaining and getting it done. If there’s anyone to pat on the back, it’s her because everyone else got to be fully clothed and not in a summer dress.
The other thing that stood out to me was all the running you do. Did you train at all to be able to run like that in the snow?
I don’t know if this is the way to do it, but you want the person to not be a runner. I want to see the person struggling with it. So no, there wasn’t a particular kind of running prep because I feel like it’s just more interesting to watch someone that’s out of breath and you’re like, “I don’t know if they can do this.”
What was the messiest and bloodiest scene you had to shoot?
Definitely once we got down to the maternity ward stuff. At that point, you’re completely soaked in this blood and this floor that’s completely blood. People were getting taken out constantly or almost going down. At that point in that movie, there’s not a part of me that’s not completely covered in blood and goo.
How did you shoot the jump down to the ground from the farmhouse?
That is one of the only ones that we had a stunt team come in and do. Other than that, it felt it was important to do everything. That was one where, well, I don’t know what to say they just wouldn’t let me do it. But our great stunt guy that did it, he didn’t have any wires on him or anything. He just took the fall. I remember him afterwards saying he really hit his tailbone pretty hard.
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