Zach Cregger Reveals How Star Austin Abrams Almost Died on the Set of ‘Resident Evil’
Making movies can be dangerous, and Zach Cregger has shared details on how star Austin Abrams nearly died on the set of ‘Resident Evil’.
Earlier this morning, I recapped the footage shown for Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil during a preview event. I will reiterate…I think we have a winner on our hands. While it’s impossible to determine the quality of a film from eighteen minutes, I can say that what I saw gave me hope that this will, by far, be the best film in the franchise that we’ve gotten to date.
What I didn’t mention in that recap was how Zach Cregger described a different kind of terrifying moment…one where star Austin Abrams almost died.
Recalls Cregger, “So there’s a scene in this movie…it’s in the trailer. He’s [Austin] running down the street, and there’s zombies on the roof of the buildings on either side, and they’re all leaping at him. And so we had to design this thing where he’s just running with bodies falling and detonating all around him. I knew I didn’t want to do it with VFX. So I was like, how do we do this?“
How, indeed? Continues Cregger, “All these explosions are real, and the way to do it is, you get a bunch of cranes, and you have all these body-sized blood bags, and you rehearse the shit out of how they’re going to fall, and how fast he’s going to run, and then you just shoot it. So, he’s running, and they’re releasing these bags that are falling and hitting all around and exploding. One triggered too early, and it missed him by inches. And these things are all like one hundred and fifty pounds, and would have killed him if he had been one step to the right. He would have died. And it’s in the movie. So it’s fucking worth it. I was pretty stoked.“
Obviously, Cregger assured us he was glad Abrams was safe and uninjured (though reiterated the actor suffered quite a few injuries on set during what is a pretty physical role). But he was stoked, as I’m sure we all would be, because you just can’t fake a near-death encounter like that as well as the real thing. Seeing it on film is only going to add to the shock audiences feel as Abrams’ character (and the actor) just barely survive the onslaught.
