Netflix’s new Resident Evil series arrives on July 14, but hell is already breaking loose. In a new Resident Evil series clip, the Wesker family – made up of Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick), Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska), and Billie Wesker (Siena Agudong) – infiltrate a lab and tend to fresh injuries. In the scene, Albert orders his daughters away from a plan spiraling out of control. After hacking a nearby terminal, he covers himself in blood and steels himself for the next part of the plan. I guess he intends to use the blood as cover against a horde of undead, which I think is innovative AF. The scene is intense as red lights paint the room in a horrific glow and sirens blare overhead.
The Resident Evil series will show events playing out in two different timelines:
In the first timeline, fourteen-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker are moved to New Raccoon City. A manufactured, corporate town, forced on them right as adolescence is in full swing. But the more time they spend there, the more they come to realize that the town is more than it seems and their father may be concealing dark secrets. Secrets that could destroy the world.
Cut to the second timeline, well over a decade into the future: there are less than fifteen million people left on Earth. And more than six billion monsters — people and animals infected with the T-virus. Jade, now thirty, struggles to survive in this New World while the secrets from her past – about her sister, her father, and herself – continue to haunt her.
Resident Evil stars Lance Reddick (The Guest) as Albert Wesker, Ella Balinska (Charlie’s Angels) as the adult Jade Wesker, Tamara Smart (Artemis Fowl) as teenage Jade Wesker, Siena Agudong (Upside-Down Magic) as Billie Wesker, Paola Nuñez (Bad Boys for Life) as Albert Wesker’s associate Evelyn Marcus, Ahad Raza Mir (Hum Tum) as Jade’s husband Arj, Connor Gosatti (3rd Night) as teenager Simon, and Adeline Rudolph (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) in an unspecified role.
If Netflix’s new Resident Evil series clip is a tease of what’s to come, I can’t wait to dive into this show. Showrunner Andrew Dabb recently explained to Entertainment Weekly that his Netflix series “took all the games and smashed them together.” This approach may sound like a risky venture, but Dabb sounds confident about the process. Dabb says that he and the writing team “treated the events and mythology of all the games as if they were the backstory for their show to launch a brand new story for the franchise.” Shuffling things up and starting a brand-new story is a great idea. Plenty of Resident Evil adaptations have tried and failed to focus on critical aspects of the franchise, so why not take all the toys out of the box and go nuts?
Thankfully, we won’t have to wait long to find out if Dabb’s Resident Evil series is successful. The series drops onto Netflix on Friday, July 14, just in time for the weekend. My fingers are crossed that this attempt at adapting Resident Evil is the one that breaks the mold.