Video game movies are usually a disaster. It’s basically a law of nature at this point. When Johannes Roberts stepped up to direct Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City, fans genuinely thought the curse might finally break. Paul W.S. Anderson’s long-running series with Milla Jovovich had strayed so far from the source material that it was basically "Alice in Wonderland" with zombies and slow-motion trench coats. We wanted horror. We wanted the Spencer Mansion. We wanted the Raccoon City Police Department.
We got them. But it didn't really work.
Released in late 2021, this reboot attempted to cram the plots of the first two games into a single 107-minute runtime. It’s a messy, claustrophobic, and surprisingly low-budget feeling trip down memory lane that proves you can follow the "lore" and still miss the mark. Honestly, the movie feels like a love letter written by someone who only had twenty minutes to get their thoughts on paper before the mailman arrived.
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The Problem With Mashing Two Masterpieces Together
The biggest mistake Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City made was its timeline. In the original Capcom games, the Arklay Mountains incident (Resident Evil 1) happens in July 1998. The destruction of Raccoon City (Resident Evil 2 and 3) happens two months later in September. By forcing Claire Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and Chris Redfield into the same night, the movie robs the story of its breathing room.
You’ve got the STARS Alpha team exploring the mansion while Claire is simultaneously uncovering the underground Umbrella facility with Leon. It’s too much.
Instead of the slow, creeping dread of the Spencer Mansion, we get a "greatest hits" compilation. You see the "itchy tasty" diary entry. You see the first zombie turn its head. You see the crows. But because the movie is constantly cutting back and forth between the mansion and the police station, none of these iconic moments have the chance to actually be scary. It's just fan service for the sake of fan service.
Casting and Character Deconstruction
Let's talk about Leon.
In the games, Leon S. Kennedy is the rookie cop who arrives late for his first day, only to become a global counter-terrorism agent. In Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City, Avan Jogia’s portrayal turned him into a bit of a bumbling comic relief character. Fans hated it. It’s one of those instances where "humanizing" a character actually strips away what made them cool in the first place.
On the flip side, Kaya Scodelario’s Claire Redfield carries the film. She’s the one driving the plot, acting as the conspiracy theorist who actually knows what’s going on. Her chemistry with Robbie Amell’s Chris Redfield feels authentic, mostly because they both lean into the grit of a 1990s action flick.
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Where the Movie Actually Got It Right
It wasn't all bad. Far from it.
If you look at the set design, it’s incredible. The production team clearly spent their limited budget on recreating the RPD lobby and the Spencer Mansion's dining hall. Walking into those sets felt like stepping into the PlayStation 1 era. The use of practical effects for the "Licker" and some of the transformation sequences felt way more grounded than the CGI sludge of the Jovovich era.
- The 1998 aesthetic: Pagers, CRT monitors, and Jennifer Paige’s "Crush" playing on the radio.
- The atmosphere: It finally felt dark. The previous movies were often too bright, too "action-movie." This felt like a rainy, dying Midwest town.
- Easter eggs: From the "Moonlight Sonata" puzzle to the Ashford twins' creepy film reel, the movie is packed with details that only players will catch.
Why It Didn't Hit the Mark With General Audiences
The problem is that if you aren't a Resident Evil superfan, the movie is confusing. Why is there a giant underground lab under an orphanage? Why is the Chief of Police so weird? Why does the guy with the sunglasses (Wesker) have a secret mission?
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The script expects the audience to already have an emotional connection to these names. For a newcomer, it’s just a bunch of people running through dark hallways. Roberts, who directed the decent shark flick 47 Meters Down, knows how to build tension in small spaces, but he struggled with the scale of a corporate conspiracy.
The budget—reportedly around $25 million—was also a massive hurdle. For a movie about a global bio-outbreak, everything felt oddly small. Raccoon City looked like three streets and a parking lot. When the "G-Virus" transformation happens at the end, the CGI starts to buckle under the weight of the ambition. It just didn't have the polish needed to compete with big-budget horror like The Conjuring or It.
The Legacy of the Raccoon City Reboot
We haven't seen a sequel. With a global box office of about $42 million, it didn't exactly set the world on fire. Sony and Screen Gems seem to be in a holding pattern with the live-action film rights, especially after the Netflix Resident Evil series also crashed and burned.
What Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City teaches us is that accuracy isn't the same thing as quality. You can copy the outfits and the hallways, but if the pacing is off and the characters don't feel like themselves, the "soul" of the game is lost. It’s a fascinating failure—a movie that tried too hard to be the game and forgot to be a movie.
What to Do if You Want a Better Resident Evil Experience
If you finished the movie and felt unsatisfied, there are better ways to get your fix of the T-Virus.
- Play the Remakes: Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 4 (2023) are arguably the best way to experience this story. They handle the horror and the "action hero" tropes better than any film ever could.
- Watch the CG Movies: Resident Evil: Degeneration or Resident Evil: Death Island feature the original voice actors and stay strictly within the game canon. They aren't high art, but they are consistent.
- Check Out the Original Script: Constantinos (the original writer) had a much darker, more focused vision for the script before it was condensed. Reading up on the development history reveals a much more cohesive story that we sadly never got to see on screen.
The Raccoon City incident remains one of the most iconic settings in pop culture history. It deserved a sprawling, three-hour epic or a high-budget limited series. Instead, we got a rushed, 90-minute dash through a haunted house. It's fun for a Friday night with pizza, but it’s far from the definitive Resident Evil experience.