Resident Evil fan film reunites live action actors from original PS1 game

Aside from Jill Valentine, the entire cast of Resident Evil 1’s live action cut scenes have returned for a feature length YouTube film.

Jun Takeuchi, executive producer on the Resident Evil series, recently shared a thank you message with fans to celebrate the franchise’s 30th anniversary, highlighting the sales success of last month’s Resident Evil Requiem.

While he and the team have promised ‘even more wonderful experiences in the future,’ they’ve offered no sort of tease for what to expect from the eventual Resident Evil 10 or any of the rumoured remakes.

One of those remakes is apparently for the very first Resident Evil game, but while that’s yet to be confirmed, fans do have the next best thing: a full-length feature film starring (most of) the original game’s live action actors.

Titled Resurrection: A Biohazard Story (Biohazard being the Japanese name for Resident Evil), the project was successfully crowdfunded last year and launched on Sunday to coincide with Resident Evil’s 30th anniversary.

The big pull of the film is that it stars actors from the first game, who appeared in the live action cut scene at the beginning.

So, that’s Charlie Kraslavsky as Chris Redfield, Greg Smith as Barry Burton, Eric Pirius as Albert Wesker, and Linda (without a surname) as Rebecca Chambers.

Obviously, all the actors are 30 years older, but they’re still fairly recognisable in their roles and the movie has taken the passage of time into consideration since, rather than retelling the plot of Resident Evil 1, it’s a wholly original story set decades after the events of the game.

You’ll notice there’s one clear omission: Jill Valentine. That’s because she’s played by a new actress, Annie Roig, rather than the woman who portrayed her in the original game.

Jill’s original live action actress was a major mystery for years amongst Resident Evil fans, as she was only ever credited as Inehz.

However, her identity was discovered a few years ago. Despite this, she doesn’t appear to have shown any interest in engaging with the series, either in this film or anything else.

Whether she was approached to reprise her role as Jill or not is unclear, but you have to imagine the production team tried to contact her. After all, they managed to get Barry’s actor back, despite him being a retired school headmaster living in Australia.

The fan film has a couple of appearances from old Resident Evil voice actors too. Ward Sexton, who provided his voice for the iconic ‘Resident Evil’ title call, does the same thing for the movie’s intro and Pablo Kuntz, who voiced Wesker in the in-game cut scenes, shows up as a wholly new character named Walt Witherby.

You can watch the full film on YouTube, which has already gone down well with fans, accruing 10,000 likes at the time of writing. Avoid reading the comments, though, as they spoil a couple of other surprise appearances.

‘Just want to thank everyone involved for making this possible,’ reads a comment by director Andrew Saullo. ‘We hope you enjoy the film and thank you for your continued support.

‘Those that built this franchise we love deserve so much for bringing so much joy to this world and we hope this gives them that opportunity.’

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