How Austin Abrams Narrowly Avoided Dying For Real On Zach Cregger's Resident Evil Set

If you thought playing a "Resident Evil" video game was terrifying enough, try actually filming it in what's shaping up to be the best movie adaptation yet. Writer/director Zach Cregger has already conquered the worlds of sketchy Airbnb's ("Barbarian") and child-abducting witches ("Weapons"), so he's now setting his sights on one of the most beloved horror franchises ever created. From everything that we've seen in the "Resident Evil" marketing so far, the straightforwardly-titled film looks like the definitive live-action version of what countless gamers enjoyed so much over the last few decades. But, as fun as it'll likely be to watch this unfold in front of us, actually bringing it to life on-set was another matter.

Just ask star Austin Abrams. The film's leading man serves as our main protagonist in this nightmarish setting, and he lived to tell the tale ... barely. In a special event attended by /Film's Bill Bria, Sony Pictures screened 20 minutes of "Resident Evil" to a small group of journalists and followed it up with a Q&A by Cregger himself. While talking about the production process, the filmmaker pinpointed one scene in particular that posed the greatest hazard to Abrams' health. According to Cregger:

"It's in the trailer momentarily, but [Austin Abrams is] 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 basically design this thing where he's just running and bodies are just falling and detonating all around him. And I knew I didn't want to do it with VFX because I feel like it would just look like VFX. So, I was like, 'How do we do this where all these explosions are real?'"

Yeah, you can probably see where this is going.

Acting in a zombie movie ain't for the faint of heart, but Austin Abrams can walk away from the experience of filming "Resident Evil" with his head held high — even if he has a few scars to show for it. Speaking at the aforementioned Q&A, Zach Cregger explained that he opted for a more practical approach to the film's most spectacular visual. Indeed, the centerpiece of the most recent "Resident Evil" trailer has Abrams' character Bryan running for his life down a snowy street, dodging infected literally falling from the skies all around him and exploding on impact.

According to Cregger, this involved painstaking amounts of rehearsing, precise choreography, and dropping "body-sized blood bags" from cranes all around the actor. Things almost went horribly wrong, however, when one 150-pound bag came dangerously close to hitting Abrams. As Cregger explained:

"It would've killed him. If he had been one step to the right, he would've died. [The shot is] in the movie, so it's f***ing worth it. I was pretty stunned [...] That's what's so great about making movies is you have this scene, you have this amazing idea in your head, and then you just have all these people help you realize that idea and immortalize it on the screen. And there's a real sense of teamwork and accomplishment. I'm very proud of this movie. I feel like I grew a lot making it, just as a filmmaker."

All's well that ends well, I suppose. Cregger does mention that Abrams didn't walk away entirely unscathed, adding that he "split his head open in an elevator shaft" during one serious accident elsewhere. Hopefully, nothing else befalls Abrams before the already much buzzed-about "Resident Evil" hits theaters on September 18, 2026.