---
title: "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City"
year: 2021
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city"
fi1m_id: "resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city"
imdb_id: "tt6920084"
tmdb_id: 460458
wikidata_id: "Q101069738"
fi1m_score: 47
critics_score: 48
critics_reviews: 14
published: "2026-09-22T21:21:12.927671+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-22T21:21:22.612499+00:00"
region: "IL"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

Directed by Johannes Roberts · 1h 47m · Action, Horror, Science Fiction

## Identity

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city
- **IMDb ID:** tt6920084
- **TMDB ID:** 460458
- **Wikidata ID:** Q101069738
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6920084/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/460458, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q101069738

**Fi1m score: 47** · Critics 48 from 14 reviews

*In a sentence:* Two video games, twelve characters and about one working light bulb between them

> Johannes Roberts sends the series back to 1998 and to horror, and for forty minutes a rain-soaked, emptied-out Raccoon City is a place we wanted to stay in. Then he tries to film two games at once and loses the town in the dark.

## Synopsis

Raccoon City, 1998. Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) hitches a lift in the rain back to the town where she grew up, meaning to warn her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) that something is wrong. Umbrella has pulled out, the shops are boarded and the few people left look unwell; lorries with the company’s logo are heading out on the road she came in by. At the police station a rookie, Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia), reports to Chief Irons (Donal Logue), while Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper) are sent out on a call to a mansion beyond the town. Then a siren sounds across the streets.

## Review

Johannes Roberts writes and directs a fresh start for [*Resident Evil*](https://film.one/film/resident-evil), and his idea is to go backwards. Out go the Milla Jovovich films, with their wire-work and their white corridors; in comes Raccoon City in 1998, a company town the Umbrella Corporation has finished with and is leaving to rot. The games were about being alone in a large dark building without enough ammunition, and for a while the film remembers that. It runs 107 minutes, carries a 15 certificate, and spends its first forty minutes or so being the film it wants to be.

Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) comes home in the cab of a lorry, in the rain, to a town with more boarded windows than people. Jennifer Spence’s production design gives us wet asphalt, dead neon and Umbrella lorries heading for the exit, and Maxime Alexandre lights it all in orange sodium and not much else. We felt our shoulders tighten in these early minutes, not at anything that happens but at how empty the streets are and how long the film is prepared to leave them that way, and we spent the next twenty minutes hoping it would keep that up.

The cast is better than the script gives them cause to be. Scodelario plays Claire as tired rather than tough, a woman who has been running from this place for years and is not pleased to be back, and she carries the first half almost alone. Avan Jogia’s Leon Kennedy is a rookie who is treated by everyone, the film included, as a joke, which is funnier than we expected. Hannah John-Kamen’s Jill Valentine and Tom Hopper’s Albert Wesker share a squad car and some bickering; Donal Logue’s Chief Irons is a sour bully with the best line about the town. Robbie Amell, as Claire’s brother Chris, mostly frowns at her. Neal McDonough’s William Birkin arrives with a briefcase and we will leave him there.

Then the film divides. Half the characters drive out to a mansion, the other half hole up in the police station, and Roberts has to cut between two games that were never built to share an evening. Dev Singh’s editing does not so much cross-cut as alternate, and each time we leave one building the tension in it drains away and has to be built again from nothing. The mansion is the better set and gets less time.

Alexandre keeps the second half so dim that we sometimes could not tell who was firing at what, and the reason becomes plain whenever the computer-generated creatures step into the light: the skin does not sit on the bodies, and they move with a weightless, sped-up quality that no shadow disguises. Mark Korven, who did such patient, scraping work on *The Witch*, is asked here to bang on a door for an hour, and the score rises at every corner until the film has no quiet left to be frightened in. By the last half hour we were bored, then slightly cross about it, because the opening had shown us Roberts knows how to do this.

His *47 Meters Down* put two women in a shark cage at the bottom of the sea and stayed with them, and it worked because it never left. Here he has a dozen named characters, two buildings, a good deal of lore and 107 minutes, and the result is a film that keeps stopping to introduce someone. Players will recognise a great deal, down to a diary entry lifted from the first game, and Roberts plainly loves the material. Loving it is not the same as making it frightening.

Most critics landed about where we have, with most of the reviews either undecided or against, and we understand both camps. If you played these games in a bedroom in 1998 there is a real pleasure in seeing the station’s main hall built full-size and rained on. If you did not, this is a competent haunted-town picture that loses its way once it leaves the town, and you will spend its second half squinting.

*Fi1m score 47, published 22 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics land somewhere between disappointed and faintly relieved. The consensus is that this reboot makes the right decision in returning the series to horror rather than action, and in recreating the games’ locations and characters with real care; the 1990s setting, the practical effects and a moody, reasonably tense first hour come in for praise. Several reviews credit it as more faithful and more grounded than the earlier films in the franchise. Scodelario’s performance draws a kind word or two.

The reservations are about everything else. The script is thin, the cast of characters too large to develop, the second half is widely felt to fall apart, and the digital effects are called cheap by more than one reviewer. Few critics report being frightened. The spread is wide: Film Stories finds a solid, energetic B-picture, while Variety and the Los Angeles Times find it barely coherent and long for the earlier films’ competence.

## Straight answers

**Is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City worth watching?**

*Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City* is a mixed bag we scored 47: a strong, rain-soaked first forty minutes in an emptied-out town, then a second half that tries to film two games at once and loses its way in the dark. Players who know the original games will enjoy seeing the police station built full-size; everyone else will spend the last hour squinting.

**How long is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, and what is it rated?**

*Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City* runs 1h 47m. It is an action and horror film.

**Where can I watch Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City in Israel?**

*Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City* is available to rent from Apple TV from ₪16.90. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, and is it suitable for children?**

*Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City* carries a 15 certificate in the UK and an R in the US, and is not suitable for children. It is a zombie horror film with gunfire, infected townspeople and computer-generated creatures, though the second half is so dimly lit that the violence is often hard to make out. It is more gloomy than frightening, and older teenagers used to the games will find little here to trouble them.

**What should I watch after Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City?**

After *Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City*, try [*Train to Busan*](https://film.one/film/train-to-busan) (2016, Fi1m 84): A zombie outbreak with people worth saving and a train that never stops for lore. Then [*Resident Evil*](https://film.one/film/resident-evil-2002) (2002, Fi1m 56): Anderson’s first go: sillier, slicker, and clearer about where everyone is standing.

### Reviews we read (14)

- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (65/100, inferred): The film is a reasonably entertaining, unpretentiously gory horror exercise set in the late 1990s in Raccoon City. It suffers from an excess of characters drawn from older Resident Evil lore but features competent action sequences and nostalgic 90s tech callbacks. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/02/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review-unpretentiously-gory-horror-game-reboot)
- **Radio Times**, Emma Simmonds (5.2/10): The critic finds this 1990s-set reboot lacklustre, with a story merging the first two games that fails to mesh its disparate threads. The script relies on clichés and identikit characters, while the film offers samey action, autopilot performances and a lack of decent scares or thrills. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-htqbqq/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city/)
- **Slant Magazine**, Mark Hanson (2/4): The film starts with some promising cheeky humor and mounting dread in its first hour but devolves into incoherent sludge in the second half, failing to replace the cool aesthetics and action of prior adaptations or meaningfully engage with corporate malfeasance themes. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review-johannes-roberts/)
- **The New York Times**, Amy Nicholson (50/100, inferred): Roberts’s origin tale excuses the absence of Milla Jovovich and embraces ’90s nostalgia with kitschy details like beepers. It sets up the zombie apocalypse in Raccoon City but remains familiar lore to fans without much new to offer beyond the setting. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/movies/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review.html)
- **Empire**, James White (40/100, inferred): The film captures the games' spirit through faithful recreations of locations and characters but fails to deliver cinematic thrills. Lazy scripting, thin scares and poor CG effects are singled out as major drawbacks. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city/)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Brian Tallerico (40/100, inferred): The film is the most directly inspired by the games yet, with familiar characters, locations, and practical effects that evoke the survival-horror tone. However, choppy action, clunky storytelling, poor geography in scenes, and a lack of tension make it predictable fan service rather than a dread-inducing experience. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-movie-review-2021)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Kimber Myers (25/100, inferred): The reboot is brain-dead and fails to replicate the fear or imaginative gore of the games, with thin characters and no real sense of place despite nostalgic ’90s references. It makes one long for the earlier films’ capable horror-action direction despite their flaws. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-11-22/review-resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city)
- **Variety**, Nick Schager (20/100, inferred): The reboot supplies fan service and faithful touches from the first two games but has scarce coherent plotting, fewer scares, chintzy CGI, and superficial authenticity that cannot compensate for absent tension or one-dimensional characters. Subpar effects, helter-skelter editing, and a blaring score mark it as a disappointing contemporary B-movie. [Read](https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review-1235115912/)
- **Film Stories**, Simon Brew (77/100, inferred): The reboot is a solid addition and upgrade on the previous films in the series, with energy, mood and pace that make the first hour fly by. It takes the franchise back to its roots effectively but feels like a standard studio picture in the final act and leaves plenty of room for improvement. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/reviews/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review-an-upgrade-patch/)
- **NME**, Nick Levine (70/100, inferred): The film succeeds on its own modest terms as an old-school horror flick, delivering eeriness and sufficient scares in a rundown Raccoon City setting. The director creates a suitably atmospheric and predictable but effective zombie thriller, elevated by Scodelario's performance. [Read](https://www.nme.com/reviews/film-reviews/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-old-school-zombie-flick-serves-up-sufficient-scares-3110732)
- **Polygon**, Jesse Hassenger (65/100, inferred): The film returns the series to its horror roots with moody textures and skillful B-movie style, but it is not particularly scary and feels diffuse with underdeveloped characters. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22800657/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review/)
- **Deadline**, Valerie Complex (50/100, inferred): The reboot improves on prior entries with more efficient storytelling, better tension and character development, plus a solid cast led by capable female characters. It falters with a meandering middle section full of unnecessary exposition, disjointed pacing and unconvincing special effects. [Read](https://deadline.com/2021/11/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review-1234879318/)
- **Digital Spy**, Ian Sandwell (40/100, inferred): The movie is very faithful to the games with accurate locations, characters and moments, but this loyalty causes it to lack bite, terror and tension. It feels overstuffed yet undercooked, with no notable scares or memorable set pieces, making it less engaging than prior entries. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a38317958/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review/)
- **/Film**, Chris Evangelista (4/10): The reboot wisely leans into horror and direct references from the games rather than action, but it ultimately feels undercooked and dull with little story holding the game elements together. It is a pointless exercise that fails to deliver on its potential. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/669603/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city-review-the-reboot-wisely-trades-action-for-horror-but-its-not-enough/)

## Details

- **Director:** Johannes Roberts
- **Director:** Johannes Roberts
- **Writer:** Johannes Roberts
- **Cinematography:** Maxime Alexandre
- **Editor:** Dev Singh
- **Music:** Mark Korven
- **Production design:** Jennifer Spence
- **Costume design:** Jennifer Lantz
- **Producer:** Robert Kulzer, Hartley Gorenstein, James Harris
- **Cast:** Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield; Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine; Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield; Tom Hopper as Albert Wesker; Avan Jogia as Leon Kennedy; Donal Logue as Chief Irons; Neal McDonough as William Birkin; Lily Gao as Ada Wong
- **Runtime:** 1h 47m
- **First release (Canada):** 24 November 2021
- **Genres:** Action, Horror, Science Fiction
- **Budget:** $25 million
- **Box office:** $42 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQqqAWMIIAQ

## Where to watch in Israel

- Apple TV: rent ₪16.90, hd
- Apple TV: buy ₪29.90, hd

*Checked 2026-09-22.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, TH, TR, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Silent Hill* (2006): Another game adaptation, one that trusted fog and ash to do the frightening
- *[REC]* (2007): One Barcelona block of flats, one camera, no exits; the tension this film keeps losing
- *Train to Busan* (2016), Fi1m 84: A zombie outbreak with people worth saving and a train that never stops for lore — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/train-to-busan.md)
- *The Fog* (1980): Carpenter’s small coastal town goes wrong overnight, and every light is placed with care
- *Resident Evil* (2002), Fi1m 56: Anderson’s first go: sillier, slicker, and clearer about where everyone is standing — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/resident-evil-2002.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/resident-evil-welcome-to-raccoon-city