Gaming fans know that fear and they’ve known it since the first goofy footage depicting the live-action S.T.A.R.S. forces entered the mansion in the Arklay woods in the opening to the smash hitResident Evilway back in 1996. From that time on live-action takes on the zombie-shooting franchise have been on fans’ minds—and after the six films starring Milla Jovovich (and the not-as-popularfilm from 2021), Netflix stepped in toproduce a new series.
Now Netflix has dropped the first trailer, highlighting hints of what fans can expect over the course of the first season, a highlight that doesn’t shy away from the gruesome gore the franchise is synonymous with. The series will take viewers back to those heady days of killing zombies and uncovering worse genetic monsters along the way and all in a shiny new streaming package.
Related:Where Does The New Resident Evil Series Fit In The Timeline?
The series isn’t Netflix’s first crack at theResident Eviluniverse—a franchise that’s branched out into arcade games and even themed slot machines for casinos—since they have the CGI-animatedResident Evil: Infinite Darknesscoming in 2021. This is just their first biteat the live-action apple.
The trailer opens with a voiceover informing viewers, “They said the world would ended in 2036. But they were wrong. The world ended a long time before that,” over footage of a young woman—Ella Balinska, playing Jane Wesker—hiding by burning barricades while gunners in turrets mow down hordes of rampaging zombies. Everything is on fire and has a veryTerminator 2apocalyptic feel.
It then cuts to Jane entering a clean, futuristic city while the audience is told that Umbrella knows it has a bad reputation and is trying to make amends for itself over footage of high-tech medical operations and dancing CGI teddy bears set to the theme from 1959 classicA Summer Place. If this all sounds veryBlack Mirror-ish, congratulations. There’s also aJurassic Worldvibe to the whole thing—a company acknowledging that it has to make amends for past mistakes and doing it all in a coldly glossy way while the trouble is about to start all over again. Both evenfeature evil mad scientists.
Then the hero starts running as a giant caterpillar monster bursts out of the pavement in that shiny, glossy world. Lance Reddick, playing Albert Wesker, mentions that the new medicine that Umbrella was shifting onto the public contains the T-Virus, an element of the story that any fan will immediately know is bad news. That was the virus that set off the “Arklay incident” and every game since, with variations on the virus running rampant and creating all sorts of beasties that love to rave from beyond the grave.
Cue up shots of zombies, survivors fleeing underground and telling each other to be quiet as a giant spider webs down, a licker running amok, and the resident Evil motherload is on full display. Jane revs up a chainsaw and starts tearing through the undead like she’sAsh and the Necronomicon just got read. The trailer ends with a shot of a Tyrant waking up in a tank and bashing on the glass—for fans, Resident Evilhas arrived.
