‘Resident Evil’ Was Too Funny for Test Audiences. Now I Want the “Comedy Cut”

Resident Evil hits theaters this Friday, September 18, with Zach Cregger potentially delivering the biggest domestic opening in franchise history. Deadline reported an opening projection around $35 million+, which would put it ahead of every previous installment if that number holds.

That’s pretty incredible considering how big Paul W.S. Anderson’s series became. Those movies were popcorn-munching action epics, throwing monsters and mythology into his own kitchen sink of chaos. I had a blast with them. Johannes Roberts later leaned into the games’ recognizable characters and locations with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which, for me, proved that fidelity alone doesn’t make a good movie.

Now Cregger is bringing his own sensibilities to the franchise, and one of the things that excites me most about him is his comedy background. Which makes the news that he removed jokes from Resident Evil particularly interesting.

After trimming the humor during testing, Cregger told The Hollywood Reporter, “I learned that people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible.

“I then found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more, but I also liked the movie a lot more,” he added. “A little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie, and there’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss.”

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know I love comedians who move into horror. Cregger came out of The Whitest Kids U’ Know, and you can feel that understanding of timing throughout Barbarian and Weapons. He knows how to wind you up, let you breathe, and then get you again.

I don’t particularly like slapstick. I don’t need somebody stopping a scary movie to deliver a punchline, and straight-up horror-comedy isn’t usually what I’m chasing. But I fucking love comedy in my horror. Humor that comes out of the situation, out of somebody’s reaction, out of something going so spectacularly wrong that you can’t help but laugh.