Austin Abrams has spoken out about narrowly escaping death during a stunt on the set of the new Resident Evil film.
The actor, who stars in the recently released horror reboot, recalled the incident alongside director Zach Cregger in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. Abrams, 28, was filming a scene that required 150-pound human-sized blood bags to be dropped from six stories up as he ran down a street. The stunt was timed so the bags would land around him, creating the effect of zombies detonating near his character.
Cregger, 42, first detailed the near-miss during the interview. “There’s a scene where he’s running down the street and we’re dropping these 150 pound human-sized blood bags from six stories up and we’ve timed so as he’s running, they’re landing around him,” the director said. “One of them triggered early and it landed six inches away from him. If he had been six inches to the right, it would’ve [been] lights out.”
The director then joked about the danger involved in capturing the shot. “It’s awesome, but it’s crazy. I would never intentionally put him in harms way,” Cregger said.
Abrams responded with a laugh. “Of course you wouldn’t,” he quipped, before recalling the repeated takes: “After every take you’re [Cregger] like, ‘alright we’re going to go again’, Whew okay.”
Cregger had previously addressed the incident during a Q&A before the film’s release, explaining his decision to use practical effects rather than VFX for the sequence. “It’s in the trailer momentarily, but [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,” the director said. “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?'”
The director gave a more blunt assessment of how close Abrams came to serious injury. “It would’ve killed him. If he had been one step to the right, he would’ve died,” Cregger said. “[The shot is] in the movie, so it’s f****** worth it. I was pretty stunned.”
Despite the harrowing experience, Cregger expressed pride in the finished film and the collaborative effort behind it. “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,” he said. “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.”
The blood bag stunt was designed to show zombies leaping from rooftops and detonating around Abrams’s character as he fled down a city street, with the practical effects intended to create a more visceral and realistic visual than computer-generated alternatives. The finished shot appears briefly in the film’s trailer and made it into the final cut of the movie, which has earned a 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes since its release earlier this month.
Resident Evil, the latest adaptation of the long-running video game franchise, hit theaters to largely positive reception from both critics and fans.