Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil is finally here, and as we said in our review, this is the Resident Evil movie we’ve been waiting for. It’s frantic, gruesome, funny, packed with seriously messed-up creatures and, most importantly, worthy of the games. Getting that experience onto the screen, however, involved falling 150-pound blood bags, hundreds of gallons of fake blood, stunt performers dangling upside down in slime, deleted jokes and one extraordinarily specific Green Herb. And that’s only scratching the surface.

We’ve dug through interviews and behind-the-scenes reports surrounding the film to uncover some of the wildest stories from its production, along with a few wonderfully nerdy details showing just how deep Cregger went with Capcom’s survival-horror series. We’re keeping major plot spoilers out of this one, so whether you’ve already survived Cregger’s Raccoon City or you’re still planning your visit, here are 10 things about Resident Evil that make the movie even crazier.

1. A Falling 150-Pound ‘Zombie’ Came Inches From Austin Abrams

That jaw-dropping sequence involving bodies raining from buildings wasn’t simply a case of letting the VFX team go wild. Cregger wanted the carnage happening around Austin Abrams for real, with the production rigging cranes with body-sized bags packed with fake blood and carefully timing each drop as the actor sprinted through the street below.

Cregger said one of the roughly 150-pound bags released too early and missed Abrams by inches. “He would have died. And it’s in the movie. So it’s fucking worth it,” he joked while recounting the incident.

Thankfully, that’s the dramatic version of the story. Cregger later clarified that Abrams had been following the correct marked route and conceded that “we’re being a little dramatic” about the near-death description, although Abrams himself wasn’t exactly relaxed.

Speaking with Dread Central, the actor said every attempt was “a little bit terrifying.” Apart from the bloody objects crashing around him, Abrams had to hit his marks at the right speed, avoid slipping and try not to ruin a shot that required an enormous amount of work to reset. He also told Entertainment Weekly that the bags were being dropped from around six storeys up. Watching that sequence again suddenly feels a little different.

2. The Hospital Used Around 500 Gallons of Fake Blood

If certain sets look unpleasantly wet, sticky and biologically unsafe, the production team can take that as a compliment. During a GamesRadar+ visit to the Prague production, the film’s hospital ward was reportedly still coated with the residue of around 500 gallons of fake blood — and somehow, that’s not even the weirdest part.

Production designer Tom Hammock revealed that the enormous membrane-like structures seen on the set contained actual stunt performers. They were suspended upside down, trained to hold their breath and placed against the membranes while around 50 gallons of slime was poured in with them. The material would then rupture, sending the performers tumbling into the set, all captured in-camera.

The tentacles required their own ridiculous amount of work. “It took, like, 15 people two weeks to glue the tentacles,” Hammock said. That’s 500 gallons of blood, 50 gallons of slime, upside-down stunt performers and two weeks of tentacle gluing. Nobody involved in this movie appears to have heard the phrase “good enough.”

3. Cregger Was Seriously Ill for Basically the Entire Shoot

Making a giant night-time monster movie through a freezing Czech winter would be gruelling enough when you’re healthy. Cregger wasn’t, revealing to The Guardian that he had pneumonia during the first half of production before developing a bacterial infection during the second.

“It was dark. It was cold. It was unrelenting,” he said. In another interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger identified that second illness as Campylobacter jejuni and said he was “very, very ill” throughout filming.

The shoot was heavily nocturnal, the crew was battling freezing weather, and even something as simple as continuity in the snow became a headache. Once somebody walked through pristine snow for take one, those footprints were still sitting there for take two. Raccoon City looks miserable in the finished film, and apparently making it wasn’t much more pleasant.

4. Test Audiences Thought the Movie Was Too Funny, So Cregger Started Killing Jokes

Considering the finished film still has some very funny moments, here’s an intriguing thought: Resident Evil used to have a lot more of them. Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter that early test audiences responded positively to the film, but one criticism kept coming back: it was simply too funny.

Rather than stubbornly protecting every gag because of his comedy background, Cregger started stripping them out. Audience reactions improved and, more surprisingly, he found that he preferred the movie as well. “There’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss,” he said.

That makes the dark humour that survived particularly interesting. Bryan’s panic, questionable decisions and complete inability to behave like a bulletproof action hero still provide plenty of laughs, but they’re sitting inside a film that never forgets the things hunting him are supposed to be terrifying. Somewhere in the editing-room graveyard, presumably, there’s a pile of Bryan jokes that didn’t survive the outbreak.

5. Cregger Basically Tried to Write a Video Game as a Movie

One of the reasons Resident Evil worked so well for us is that its loyalty to the games isn’t limited to Umbrella logos and recognisable props. Cregger tried to translate the actual mechanics of playing Resident Evil into a movie, and he got surprisingly literal about it.

In an interview with PlayStation Blog, Cregger explained that Bryan’s weapon progression deliberately follows the kind of path a player might take: pistol first, shotgun later, then eventually something considerably more powerful. Ammo, injuries and supplies all matter, with Cregger describing the process as trying to “write a game as a movie.”

He pushed that idea even further when discussing the series’ famous resource-management anxiety. As Dread Central reported, the filmmaker wanted audiences to know how much ammunition Bryan had left. “YOU will care when he misses a shot.”

Anyone who has ever fired three panic bullets into a wall while a zombie slowly shuffled towards them knows exactly what he’s talking about.

6. The Movie Was Designed to Keep Loading a ‘New Level’

The game-inspired thinking didn’t stop with weapons and inventory. Cregger also deliberately kept moving Bryan into new environments, treating the film’s geography almost like progression through a series of levels.

He said he tried to change the environment roughly every seven or eight minutes. The location changes, the threat changes and Bryan has to work out the rules all over again.

The visual language follows suit. During the more exploratory stretches, the camera sticks close behind Bryan in an over-the-shoulder perspective instantly familiar to players of the modern games, while Cregger also occasionally jumps into first person. It’s something we singled out in our review: you’re not simply watching Bryan enter another creepy location. At times, it genuinely feels like you’ve just pushed open the door yourself.

7. That Green Herb Is Ridiculously Specific

Plenty of game adaptations throw recognisable objects into the background and wait for fans to point at the screen. Cregger went considerably nerdier.

Resident Evil 4 is the game he says he has played most, and when bringing healing items into the film, he didn’t decide that any random green plant would do. “I took the green herb from Resident Evil 4 and replicated the bucket exactly,” Cregger revealed.

That’s alongside other familiar pieces of Resident Evil vocabulary scattered throughout the film, including First Aid Spray, typewriters, ammunition boxes, weapons and those damned locks that always seem to be standing between you and wherever you need to go.

The difference is that many of these aren’t simply there as Easter eggs. They actually serve the film’s survival mechanics. Bryan isn’t stopping so the camera can scream, “LOOK! A THING FROM THE GAME!” He needs this stuff because he’s having a truly terrible night.

8. The Monsters Pull From ‘Resident Evil 4’ AND the Divisive ‘Resident Evil 6’

Here’s a game influence some fans probably didn’t expect. The creature design didn’t only look towards the most beloved corners of the franchise, with production designer Tom Hammock saying the team pulled visual ideas from both Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 6, the latter being one of the more divisive mainline entries thanks to its much heavier embrace of blockbuster action.

“You’ll see a lot of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 6,” Hammock told GamesRadar+. The team studied elements including tentacles, teeth and the way mutations are incorporated into creatures, then used those ideas as a jumping-off point rather than simply recreating existing monsters.

Here’s where it gets even better: Hammock used to work as a virologist. He said that background helped give the production a more grounded starting point, with research into real diseases and biological forms feeding into the designs before the artists pushed everything into full Resident Evil insanity. Real medical research mixed with Resident Evil 6 monstrosities is quite a recipe.

9. Cregger Noticed the Games Have Way Too Many Doors — So He Weaponised Them

It’s one of those things you may never have consciously considered until somebody points it out: Resident Evil has a hell of a lot of doors. There are doors you can open, doors you can’t, doors requiring keys, doors requiring bizarre objects and doors hiding things that would very much like to eat you.

Cregger noticed too. During the GamesRadar+ set visit, Hammock revealed that the filmmaker had commented on there being “too many doors” in the games. Rather than avoiding that quirk, the production turned it into part of the suspense.

One purpose-built corridor contained six of them, allowing the film to play with where you’re looking. Focus on one entrance and something can suddenly emerge from somewhere else. It’s an absurdly small observation, but it gets to the heart of why this adaptation feels unusually plugged into the games: Cregger wasn’t merely looking at what Resident Evil contains, he was looking at how Resident Evil screws with you.

10. Cregger Directed a ‘Resident Evil’ Movie Without Watching Any of the Previous Ones

And finally, perhaps the strangest piece of trivia of them all. Cregger is a serious Resident Evil gamer. He’s talked extensively about resource management, weapon progression, specific healing items, camera perspectives, individual entries and even the moment in Resident Evil Village that freaked him out enough in VR that he had to remove the headset and take a break.

The previous live-action Resident Evil movies are another story. When The Guardian asked how his movie related to the previous series, Cregger’s answer was wonderfully straightforward: “I’ve never seen one.”

He has explained elsewhere that the earlier films never looked enough like the games to interest him, particularly because the tighter perspective, deliberate pacing and survival horror of the games were what appealed to him in the first place.

So the man responsible for the eighth live-action Resident Evil film went into it without studying the previous seven. Instead, he went back to the games — and considering how much we loved the result, perhaps ignoring the cinematic homework was exactly the right homework to do.

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