Even if you don’t play video games yourself, you likely know that the Resident Evil movies are based on a video game series of the same name (even if that connection gets looser with each new film). Unfortunately, the RE movies don’t do much for the reputation of video game adaptations; the first one has its share of fans and is one of the highest-rated entries in the franchise on Rotten Tomatoes, but that really isn’t saying much. But don’t discount the positive impact the iconic video game series has had on cinema just yet; it also inspired another horror series, one that in turn helped inspire a whole new wave of zombie movies. Alex Garland, writer of 28 Days Later and its upcoming sequel, 28 Years Later, was inspired to write that first script after playing the first Resident Evil game in the ’90s. Without Resident Evil, we might never have seen the rise of fast-moving zombies in film – and that’s a scary thought if there ever was one.
‘Resident Evil’ Inspired A Whole New Wave of Zombie Movies
In a 2023 interview with Inverse, Garland jokes that “28 Days Later, as a script, is very derivative,” as he cites a few iconic inspirations for the movie, including the 1963 sci-fi film The Day of the Triffids. The opening scene in particular served as a huge inspiration for the opening of 28 Days Later, as both begin with a man emerging from a hospital to find that something devastating has happened to London and the rest of the world. But a completely different form of horror is what inspired him to start writing the script in the first place. Earlier this year, Garland explained to GQ that playing Resident Evil “reminded me how much I loved zombie movies.” The game, in which you play as a member of a tactical rescue team exploring a zombie-infested mansion, came out on the PlayStation in 1996, and while playing, Garland realized there hadn’t been a good zombie movie “in ages.”
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“It’s independent from the first film.”
That alone was enough to get him writing, but he didn’t want to just rehash the same old zombie tropes. When he wasn’t playing video games or writing iconic movie scripts, Garland says he was “a science nerd” in the ’90s, reading up on cutting-edge scientific theories, like multiverses. He incorporated that passion into his script as well, discarding the usual supernatural causes of a zombie outbreak in movies. “That just didn’t sort of push my buttons,” Garland explains. Much like in Resident Evil, Garland wanted the outbreak to be a scientifically created virus, and it’s a good choice; the movie feels scarier because it’s so grounded in reality rather than the supernatural, and it’s easy to believe an outbreak like that could happen.
’28 Days Later’ Took Inspiration From Horror Classics
The Resident Evil movies have their share of zombie dogs, but nothing can compare to the terror that the ones in the video game instilled in the player. Aside from one of the most iconic jump scares in video game history, the zombie dogs could also make for some tough enemies. As Garland points out in his interview, the human zombie enemies of the game stop being scary after you fight them enough. “After I […] got good at playing the game,” Garland says, “I was thinking the zombies are not actually very scary because you can kill them quite easily or you can get away from them with a brisk walk.” They were like traditional zombies, shambling towards the player character slowly enough that it wasn’t too hard to get away. The dogs, on the other hand, were fast, vicious, and much harder to take down. Garland found that their speed made them scarier than their shuffling human counterparts, so he applied that same speed when writing 28 Days Later.
28 Days Later didn’t invent the fast zombie, but it undeniably popularized the idea and opened up a whole new world of possibilities for zombie lovers. If zombies could run, what else could they do? For all of Garland’s self-deprecation, 28 Days Later created a new form of survival horror that, like Resident Evil did for Garland, reignited audiences’ passion for innovative zombie movies.