The Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs made a Resident Evil 7 short film even though ‘it’s impossible to please everybody’

Most may know Chandler Riggs from his role as Carl in The Walking Dead, but now some may know him as the director of the short film fan-adaptation of Resident Evil 7. Lasting but 20 minutes, it’s set in the Baker’s bayou home and takes place during the garage fight scene between the protagonist Ethan Winters and the infected Jack Baker. The most jarring thing about this short film isn’t the graphic fight, though, it’s Ethan’s face.

Fans of Resident Evil 7 and Village will know that Ethan Winters is quite a shy guy, almost never showing his face apart from a couple instances in the Shadows of Rose DLC (and when you get the camera angle just right). Since both games are done in first-person there’s no need to spend a lot of time looking at the man you’re playing, and Capcom really leaned into that.

But Riggs made the decision to not only star as Ethan, but also to give him some more face time. “It was absolutely an intimidating thing,” Riggs says in an interview with IGN. “We’re trying to do so much [that’s] super faithful and true to the game, but this is a huge aspect that we are breaking from it.

“But there isn’t really another good way to tell [the story] in a live-action format. I was going back and forth like ‘Okay, could we do first person the whole time? Could we avoid getting his face in or anything?’ But the more we went back and forth on it, the more I was like, I mean, if we are going to do this and are going to appeal to a wider audience—more than just the people who played the games—then we’re going to have to break those rules. It was very intimidating. Hopefully people are okay with it.”

In this sense Riggs empathises with Zach Cregger and his film interpretation of Resident Evil levelling that “it’s impossible to please everybody” and that there will always be “a crowd that is unhappy… But I think that it’s a great way to try to get more people into the series, into the franchise, and tell a story that you want to tell.”

Riggs goes on to admit that adapting Resident Evil for the silver screen is no easy task, which is why he respects Cregger’s choice to go his own way and do his own thing instead of being chained to the lore.

“I’ve been looking forward to [Cregger’s RE movie] for so long,” Riggs adds. “And I mean, one of the big reasons I even made this is, you know, I was just dying to see a good, true-to-the-game live-action adaptation of Resident Evil. I cannot wait to see the new one.” The crew even tried to get their film out before Cregger’s Resident Evil but unfortunately “parts just didn’t align that way”.

But Riggs does mention that “a huge reason for me even doing this in the first place is that I love being on set and collaborating with cool people”, so he’d be game for a future collaboration with Cregger sometime: “I’m all for it. Listen, my phone is open. Hit my line!”