Chandler Riggs Brings Resident Evil 7 to Life in Impressive Fan Film BIOHAZARD
The Walking Dead star Chandler Riggs has traded walkers for the Baker family in BIOHAZARD, an unofficial Resident Evil fan film that brings one of the most memorable sections of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard into live action.
Running for around 19 minutes, BIOHAZARD is very much a fan production rather than an official Capcom project, but there is considerably more ambition behind it than you might expect from those words. Riggs doesn’t simply turn up to play Ethan Winters, either. He writes, directs and edits the short as well as taking the leading role, making BIOHAZARD an interesting showcase for what the former Walking Dead star can do behind the camera.
The story should be immediately familiar to anyone who survived Resident Evil 7. Ethan Winters’ search for his missing wife has brought him into the orbit of the deeply unpleasant Baker family, whose approach to hospitality makes dinner with Hannibal Lecter seem like a reasonable alternative. BIOHAZARD drops us into the nightmare around the infamous family dinner, with Ethan surrounded by people who clearly aren’t going to accept a polite excuse about already having eaten.
From there, the short follows Ethan as he attempts to escape, moving through a succession of increasingly unpleasant situations before building towards his confrontation with Jack Baker in the garage. Rather than trying to cram an entire game into less than 20 minutes, Riggs concentrates on recreating a particular stretch of Resident Evil 7, allowing the short to capture the filthy, claustrophobic atmosphere that made the game such a dramatic departure for the series.
Riggs is particularly well suited to the material considering he spent much of his childhood surrounded by the undead. He joined AMC’s The Walking Dead as Carl Grimes, the son of Rick and Lori Grimes, when he was still a child and remained one of the programme’s central characters through its first eight seasons. Viewers effectively watched Riggs grow up alongside Carl as the frightened youngster introduced during the early days of the apocalypse gradually became a hardened survivor accustomed to violence, death and the generally terrible consequences of somebody suggesting that the group had finally found somewhere safe.
Carl became one of the show’s most recognisable characters, giving Riggs years of experience performing within horror while still growing up in front of an enormous television audience. His departure from The Walking Dead didn’t end his acting career, but BIOHAZARD demonstrates another side of his ambitions. Writing, directing, editing and starring in the same project is a considerable workload, particularly when that project involves recreating a game with such a distinctive visual identity.
The choice of Resident Evil 7 is also interesting because the 2017 game represented one of the biggest reinventions in Capcom’s Resident Evil series. The original Resident Evil arrived in 1996 and trapped Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine inside the Spencer Mansion, establishing the mixture of exploration, puzzles, limited resources and biological horror that helped popularise the term survival horror. Resident Evil 2 expanded the nightmare into Raccoon City, while subsequent instalments developed the Umbrella Corporation conspiracy and introduced an increasingly enormous collection of viruses, monsters and people who apparently thought sunglasses were appropriate laboratory attire.
The series gradually moved towards action, particularly following the hugely influential Resident Evil 4. By Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, however, the scale had become dramatically larger than the claustrophobic horror of the original game. Then Resident Evil 7 arrived and locked the player inside a disgusting Louisiana property with a family who made zombies seem comparatively well adjusted.
The switch to a first-person perspective immediately changed the experience, while new protagonist Ethan Winters provided a way into the series largely removed from the familiar adventures of Chris, Jill, Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. The Baker estate brought back confined exploration and vulnerability while introducing Jack, Marguerite and Lucas Baker, with the game initially keeping its horror intensely personal before gradually revealing how its nightmare connected to the wider Resident Evil universe.
Its influences weren’t difficult to spot. The Baker family’s grotesque dinner sequence strongly recalls The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, while the relentless punishment inflicted upon Ethan and Jack’s refusal to stay down give parts of the game a gloriously nasty Evil Dead flavour. Those influences also make the material unusually well suited to a short fan production because its horror can be created through grim locations, physical performances, practical gore and a maniac who simply refuses to understand when he’s supposed to be dead.
Resident Evil has enjoyed a considerably more complicated relationship with live-action adaptations. Paul W.S. Anderson’s film series began in 2002 with Milla Jovovich as Alice and developed into its own increasingly action-heavy continuity across six films. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City arrived in 2021 and attempted to draw more directly from the games, particularly the first two entries, while Netflix launched its own live-action television interpretation in 2022.
Chandler Riggs Makes His Own Resident Evil Film
BIOHAZARD isn’t attempting to compete with any of those productions. It is an unofficial, non-Capcom-affiliated fan film concentrating on a section of a game its creators clearly admire, and its smaller scale is part of the appeal. Instead of worrying about decades of mythology, Umbrella conspiracies and how many laboratories can possibly be hidden beneath ordinary buildings, Riggs concentrates on Ethan Winters having an absolutely dreadful evening with the Bakers.
After eight seasons fighting walkers, Chandler Riggs has finally found another collection of infected lunatics to deal with. Unfortunately, he chose the Baker family. Carl Grimes might have been safer with Negan.
