How Zach Cregger Created Resident Evil’s Most Disgusting Scenes

The set of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil smelled of latex props and burning metal when a press tour visited the massive Prague sound stage in December. Fake blood coated the floor so thickly it stuck to the boots of visitors. Polygon joined that behind-the-scenes trip last year to observe the creation of Resident Evil. The journey followed the route of hapless medical courier Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, through the t-virus horrors of Raccoon City. Three of the film’s scariest sequences reveal the practical work behind the production.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Resident Evil

The sewer

Bryan flees a tentacled monster on his way to Raccoon City and enters a sewer tunnel. He hears a prolonged belch from a naked, pale man blocking his path. Bryan asks if the man is okay before the stomach bursts open to release a swarm of bloody rats.

The press group navigated the sewer set by cellphone light to experience the surprise of the creature. Fiberglass created the impression of walking through liquid, while pneumatic bladders in the stomach of the prop dubbed the fat man wheezed and moved the rats inside. Each rodent was an individual prop resembling a giant, diseased naked mole rat. Legacy Effects hand-sculpted the large man to add details like overgrown toenails.

Legacy Effects co-founder Shane Mahan explained the process. The sculpture required hand-forming to achieve the right organic textures.

The elevator

Bryan reaches Raccoon City General Hospital and learns the elevator to the Umbrella Corporation lab on the 24th floor is unsafe. He starts climbing the emergency stairs built from five tons of concrete, but he soon gets winded and tries the elevator.

Production designer Tom Hammock called the five-story working elevator the biggest challenge of the movie. It required sourcing tons of steel and obtaining safety certifications. Each panel could be removed to function as camera platforms, and a vertical cable-suspended rig tracked Abrams during movement.

Hammock recalled the initial reaction of the director. Zach Cregger initially questioned why they did not just use a blue box, but he embraced the practical set and captured great footage.

An acid-spitting monster known as the Puker destroys most of the elevator. An actor wore a stomach rig with tubes spewing methyl cellulose, which is the same water and powdered paper pulp blend used for alien saliva in Alien. Each take sprayed 16 gallons of the mixture. Tubs placed under the shaft failed to catch the spray, so the crew cleaned the mess overnight.

Hammock utilized the same technique seen in Fede Álvarez’s 2024 film Alien: Romulus by swapping elevator pieces with dissolving sculptures while visual effects added sizzling edges.

The maternity ward

Bryan fights with his pregnant girlfriend at the start of the movie over his reluctance to have a child. That anxiety manifests physically when he visits a maternity ward where the t-virus infects the staff and babies.

Zach Cregger wanted to introduce fresh horrors to the franchise. He noted that the zombie babies offered new enemies for players.

Legacy Effects showed off a long-limbed, blinking, three-eyed animatronic baby that crawls from a bassinet. Visual effects added a membrane on top of the creature, and puppeteers behind the walls controlled multiple mutant infants featuring bulging skulls and tentacle feet. A blood-spattered whiteboard displayed the feeding schedule.

The floor held 500 gallons of fake blood. Red embryo pods lined the room using tentacle veins that took 15 people two weeks to hand-cut and glue. Stunt performers burst out of fiberglass eggs filled with 50 gallons of red slime to chase Bryan.

Bryan escapes into a skybridge scene shot on a separate sound stage where the crew rebuilt the maternity ward doors. The props department built and wrecked the narrow skybridge using rubber rebar. Abrams performed his own stunts using cranes and track-mounted cameras.

Cregger and Hammock secured studio approval by using models and action figures to demonstrate scenes like the maternity ward to Sony executives. Hammock noted that the studio supported the practical approach and told them to pull it off.

Resident Evil is in theaters now.

Sony Pictures covered the cost of travel and lodging for this trip.

Source: Polygon