On Resident Evil, Zach Cregger knew exactly who he wanted around him. He was taking on one of gaming’s biggest horror franchises.
Cregger first broke through as a horror filmmaker with Barbarian. He followed that with Weapons and then moved on to Resident Evil. Once again, audiences showed up. The new movie opened to a franchise-best $60 million domestically. It also earned more than $108 million worldwide in its first weekend.
That is a pretty remarkable run for a filmmaker whose career once seemed headed in a completely different direction.
When it came time to figure out what Resident Evil should sound like, Cregger turned to people he already trusted. He reunited with collaborators he has known for years.
That should help Yoast quite a bit because we’ve broken up the two longest sentences without making the opening feel choppy.
Zach Cregger keeps his musical collaborators close
Cregger reunited with composers Hays Holladay and Ryan Holladay, who also worked with him on Weapons.
But their history goes back much further than movie scores.
Years ago, Cregger and the Holladay brothers were actually in a band together in New York. Ryan played bass, Hays played guitar and Cregger was the singer. Long before they were worrying about jump scares, zombies or what kind of sound should accompany something horrible appearing in the dark, they were simply making music together.
That kind of history is hard to fake.
Cregger has said that working with the brothers gives them a kind of shared musical language, which makes sense when you have been creating things together since you were young.
Resident Evil gave them a very different musical playground
Resident Evil needed something different from Weapons.
The Holladay brothers have talked about building the score around a low, pulsing sound that follows the movie’s central character and then adding stranger textures as the story gets more chaotic. Some of those sounds even started with trumpet recordings that were stretched, reversed and manipulated until they barely sounded like a trumpet anymore.
That process also happened unusually close to the actual editing of the movie.
The composers moved their equipment into the post-production offices, working near Cregger, the editor, visual-effects team and music department while the movie was still taking shape.
For Cregger, that seems to be part of the appeal.
These are not simply composers being handed a finished movie and told to put music underneath it. They are longtime collaborators helping figure out what the movie should feel like while it is still being built.
Click on the video below to hear Zach Cregger talk about working with Hays and Ryan Holladay on Resident Evil and why their long history together helped shape the film’s music.
Cregger’s horror run keeps getting bigger
The timing makes the collaboration even more interesting.
Weapons strengthened Cregger’s reputation as one of horror’s most distinctive filmmakers, and Resident Evil handed him something completely different: an established franchise with decades of games, movies and very passionate fans.
Instead of simply copying what came before, Cregger built a new story around medical courier Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, while trying to capture the vulnerability and dread associated with the games.
The result has already become the biggest opening in the franchise’s history.
Not bad for a guy who once sang in a band with the two people now helping score his horror movies.
And maybe that is part of why the collaboration works.
Sometimes the people who understand what you are trying to make best are the ones who knew you long before everybody else started paying attention.
Resident Evil is now playing in theaters.
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