How Chandler Riggs Went From The Walking Dead To Resident Evil's Most Accurate Adaptation Yet
Published Oct 24, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT
Grant Hermanns is a TV News Editor, Interview Host and Reviewer for ScreenRant, having joined the team in early 2021. He got his start in the industry with Moviepilot, followed by working at ComingSoon.net. When not indulging in his love of film/TV, Grant is making his way through his gaming backlog and exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons with friends.
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Chandler Riggs just took a major step into the director's chair with Biohazard, and it's already one of Resident Evil's most accurate adaptations.
Written and directed by the Walking Dead alum, the short film serves as an adaptation of the seventh mainline installment in Capcom's survival horror franchise, with Riggs also starring as Ethan Winters as he ventures to the derelict Louisiana plantation owned by the Baker family, where his wife went missing. When he's captured and held hostage by the monstrous Bakers, Ethan is put in a fight for survival, while also trying to determine what's happened to his wife.
Alongside Riggs, who has made his solo directorial debut after previously co-directing The Unicorn That Never Lies, the Biohazard cast includes Preacher's Jason Douglas, Outer Banks' Mary Rachel Quinn, Werewolf by Night's Eugenie Bondurant, The Pitt's Jonathan O'neil, Chicago Fire's Mia Cole and Sam Coyles. The short film notably marks one of two adaptations of the Capcom franchise releasing this year, with the other being Zach Cregger's record-smashing Resident Evil this past September.
Now, in honor of its release, ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns interviewed Chandler Riggs to discuss Biohazard: A Live-Action Resident Evil 7 Short Fan Film. When asked about the decision to specifically adapt the 2017 sequel among the 30 total Resident Evil titles in the series, Riggs began by chuckling as he recalled the idea first came about from being with his friends over the holidays, "hanging out and chatting on Discord, having some drinks" when the conversation shifted to the fact that "RE 7 would just make for a killer adaptation."
The writer/director/star went on to cite that the smaller scale of Resident Evil 7 is a big factor for why it's a perfect installment to adapt for the screen, being set in "one-ish location," coming with a "relatively small cast of characters." But, more importantly, "it's a simple story that people can get on board and relate to immediately," as Ethan's journey to save Mia and subsequently getting "mixed up with this crazy family that is keeping him from finding his wife" is a generally grounded one and, while still "not super easy" to pull off successfully," Riggs felt "it would be easier to do than a lot of the other games":
Chandler Riggs: So, I just kind of wrote out what something like that would look like, and then put it on my shelf and out of my hard drive forever, because I knew it was going to cost so much money to do it. I ended up talking with the film commissioner in Tampa Bay, and he immediately was like, "I love it! Let's incentivize it, let's get it rolling." I was like, "All right, it's not just me helping make it happen now." Then from there, everything else just kind of fell into place. I was like, "Oh man, okay, now I actually have to do it." So then we wrangled everyone together, and I grabbed two producers that I had worked with on a couple of other films in the past that are Tampa Bay locals, and know the city and know the people, and we got all together and shot it this past January.
Riggs Sought To Fill In Some Of Resident Evil 7's Narrative Gaps With Biohazard
ScreenRant: Talking about just doing it, obviously you've directed before, but this is your first time solo directing, compared to co-directing previous things. How did it feel to step into that director's chair? I know some directors find that daunting, some find it exhilarating, some find it to be just learning more lessons.
Chandler Riggs: The hardest thing wasn't the solo directing. It was more of doing both the acting and the directing at the same time. When you're an actor on set, it's way easier of a job than being a director. So then trying to do both, where it's like, "Okay, I'm in director mode. Let me think about these shots. Let's think about the time. We're only gonna have this amount of time for this setup. Okay, no, we don't need that. Let's only grab this piece here. We don't need the whole scene." I'm also editing it, so I was thinking of the edit in mind. So, then to go from that and be like, "All right, let me get into the headspace of Ethan, let me get into the character and everything." That was really the most challenging part. I was jumping back and forth, and then knowing in the back of my head that I only had one take for each of these setups, I'm like, "Okay, we took a lot of time on all these other setups that I only have time for one take of me on this setup, and then another take, maybe, closer, and then that's it." So yeah, it was a lot of pressure on that part of things, but it was a great learning experience. The biggest thing was just surrounding yourself with people that you could trust. It helped so much that Shane Brady, one of my producers, I'd worked with him, he had directed movies that I had been in, so I trusted him as a director. He's also an acting coach, so I told him beforehand, I gave him the whole thing of what I wanted the audience to feel with Ethan, so he was able to be my third eye as I'm doing these [scenes], and I don't have time to watch playback. He helped give me some direction in real time of, "Let's run it again, try this way." So, it was really helpful to be surrounded by people that I trusted in that way.
ScreenRant: That's amazing, and I think that chaotic of an experience is perfect for something like Ethan's story. Talking about surrounding yourself with people you trust, by the way, a small cast, but I think you nailed everybody's live action casting, as far as the Bakers go. But Jack is probably the most intimidating person to have to cast, given how iconic of a figure he is in that game. What was it like searching for the perfect person to bring Jack to life in this?
Chandler Riggs: It was not easy. Yeah, it was definitely not an easy thing to try to figure out who the best person was for Jack. There was a handful of other people that we were looking at and considering and trying to get, and Jason [Douglas] wasn't our first pick, but I'm so glad that we ended up with him. It got to the point where we're like, "Okay, we're four days out from filming, who would be willing to come down here on such short notice, but also be able to do the character justice, too?" It was a huge deal, and I was like, "You know what, Jason has the look, and he has the vibe of who Jack was before all of this." He has that very kind and good-natured vibe that we get to see a glimpse of [later] in the game, and I was like, "The coolest thing as an actor is when we get an opportunity to just go completely off the wall and completely nuts, and try something totally different," and hopefully we stick the landing. I was like, "I think he might be excited at the opportunity to do something like this." So, I called him, and he was immediately down, immediately like, "All right, yeah, I'm in. Let's do it." Within a day, he was already calling me, like, "Hey, I just watched gameplay of like the first five hours of the game." I was like, "Dude, what? You're you're doing like a crazy amount of research. This is perfect." [Laughs] And then he got on set and just gave the performance of a lifetime and was just incredible. I'm so happy with how it turned out. I could not have asked for a better Jack.
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ScreenRant: Since you talk about him doing research for the games, I feel like that's a great segue to talk about adapting the game itself, choosing what to adapt, because the short is less than 20 minutes versus the 8-10 hour game of Biohazard. Obviously, you can't adapt the entire thing, but I do think that the intro to the Baker family and the house is a good segment to do as a short film. So, I'm curious how you found the right way to wean it down while also teasing things like the birthday party sequence, and Mia working with Umbrella, and other stuff?
Chandler Riggs: Yeah, I will say I feel like the dinner scene was relatively easy. We stayed pretty one-to-one to the game. I think it was trying to find ways that we could elevate all these sequences. So, just sprinkling in things like Lucas reattaching his arm with the first aid fluid. That was one we were like, "Okay, doesn't quite make sense in the game how Ethan knows to use the first-aid fluid." Like, if you get that cutscene where you get the leg chopped off, then you go for the fluid, and you go to reattach your leg, it's like, "Good thing that worked! That's a lucky guess." [Laughs] So we were like, "Okay, let's try to find a way to sprinkle that in earlier. So, when Lucas' arm gets chopped off, let's have him reattach it with the fluid." So it was things like that, just finding ways to connect some of these dots and fill some holes where I felt like things could make a little bit more sense in the game, and then finding opportunities to up the scare factor. When Ethan dives down into the hatch, and he's under the house in the game, it's a relatively benign segment of a second to breathe. You're out of it, and you can just walk through the house, and then you pop out, and you're in the save room.
But for us, we don't have the save room until the end, so we're like, "We don't want this to just be he gets into the hatch, and then he gets back into another part of the house, and then the cop scene. Let's find a way to make it a little crazy." So then, that's when I got inspiration from the pilot of The Walking Dead, when Rick is in the hospital, and he's lighting the matches as he's going down the stairs. I was like, "Oh, let's just pay homage to that, and let's sprinkle in some Eveline in there, and re-affirm that it is a dangerous place, and that Eveline is everywhere in this omnipotent presence." So yeah, it was about finding ways that we can improve on things in some places, and some things that we could skirt in others and cut. Like, the cop doesn't give Ethan the pocket knife at the window, and that was because it didn't quite make sense for us for him to get to this box with just some tape over it, where he could just peel off the tape. You didn't need the pocket knife, it doesn't quite work in a real setting like that. [Chuckles] So, anyways, I'm going on a rant here, but you get what I mean, just finding ways that we can improve or make it work for live-action.
Riggs Got Some Help From A Walking Dead Vet For One Iconic Biohazard Effect
ScreenRant: No, that's such a great mentality. I hadn't even thought about the Walking Dead homage, my brain instantly went to Mia with the camera being down in that crawl space and the light clicking back on with Marguerite there. So, talking about the cop and the garage scene, I wasn't sure how anybody was gonna be able to pull off the head chop on a short budget.
Chandler Riggs: Neither was I. [Laughs]
ScreenRant: So, I've got to hear about that shot, in particular.
Chandler Riggs: Yeah, it was crazy. So, we had a practical head donated by Greg Nicotero, which is amazing. We had the head, and then we had a tube of blood running around the cop's head, so the moment the shovel first goes through his head, it's an entirely CG shovel. We did a 3D scan of the shovel and everything, and that part I knew was going to be entirely VFX, because there's no way that we could do any of that really practically. But it was only maybe 10 frames of VFX. I was like, "All right, we can get away with a good bit." But then, the moment where it cuts back to it, we basically just put together two shots of our cop character with the blood coming down his face, and he was just standing there basically just like with the green you know cap on his head, and then just crouched down, and then we just pieced that together with a shot of Jack holding just the shovel in place and delivering that amazing ad-libbed line of "I always wanted to get ahead in life." It was so good. [Chuckles] And then it was all just VFX from there of adding these blood spurts out of the top of the cop's head, adding the goop that comes down from the bottom of the shovel, like all those things that just add-on to it that make it just look gruesome and awesome.
ScreenRant: It really did just recapture that moment perfectly from the game, so kudos to you and the VFX team on that! So, talking about the practical effects, even in that garage scene, seeing Jack afterwards and seeing Marguerite, and then seeing the leg chopped off. You talk about Greg Nicotero donating a head. You're obviously no stranger to that kind of practical effect work. But as a director, what was it like working with the practical effects team to try and nail all of those different bits?
Chandler Riggs: It was awesome, and it was challenging because our special effects team hadn't done something like this before. They had done similar stuff, but they hadn't done to this level, or they had different methods of doing it than Greg was telling us to do. It worked out really well. I have some of the stuff here. [Pulls out prosthetic arm] This was Lucas' hand that we had chopped off, it was really just cut down where we were going to do the chop, and then it's just tubes right there where we ran the tubes through the rest of the arm. And then, as soon as it cuts off, we're just pumping blood out through those tubes. It's about trying to just line it up perfectly to where everything was kind of propped up. The rest of his arm was like that, so when the knife comes in, it just falls off, and it worked out pretty well. I do wish that we could have done more of a saw-off, like they do in the game, but we did the best that we could with what we had. It was a lot of fun to get to do all those really cool practical effects, and have them look really good. I'm so happy with how all the leg stuff turned out and the head, everything.
Riggs Has A Few Ideas In Mind For His Next Directorial Effort
ScreenRant: I love that. Now that you've sunk your teeth into the solo directorial chair, I'd love to know what's next for you behind the camera. Are you looking at a full-length feature, are you still in the short film world?
Chandler Riggs: I would love to dive into a full feature. I think a big point of this was to hopefully use it as a launchpad for whatever my first feature is going to be. But to be honest, I was literally working on Biohazard until a week ago. [Laughs] Doing a lot of the editing and VFX shots and everything, it was literally down to the final render was not exported until the night before it went live on YouTube. So, it was literally up until that point that I was tweaking things and fixing things and finding things that needed to be adjusted, or just fine-tuned and perfected. Make sure that with every frame, I had the time and ability to make perfect. So, yeah, Biohazard is what was what's next for me for the longest time. So, it's been hard to try to be like, "Okay, what's next now, what's the next thing?" I have a handful of scripts that I've written for features, and I'd love to get one of them developed if possible. Or, if Constantin Film or Capcom or anyone wants to expand this into anything official, I'm also down. I just like collaborating with cool, creative people. At the end of the day, that's all it's about. It's never about fame or notoriety, it's just about getting the opportunity to be on set and get to make some cool art with some cool people. So, hopefully, Biohazard will yield those opportunities.
ScreenRant: I love that you answered the next question, which was going to be if Constantin and Capcom called you, because I think you've got something here that would be great to see expanded upon. If you were to do another short, whether it be official or unofficial, what game do you think you would tackle next? Whether it be another RE game, or a different franchise?
Chandler Riggs: Oh man, there's so many good indie games that I would love to tackle. There's a horror game called Soma that I loved so much, and man, I would love so much to turn that into some sort of live-action adaptation. But the first twist, the reveal of the first twist of what you're seeing is flashbacks — I don't want to spoil too much for people who haven't played the game yet [chuckles] — that first twist relies so much on being in first person and not knowing what you look like, and not knowing what's going on here. So, it would be a really hard thing to do, but yeah, I'd love to do something like that. The Amnesia games, they're amazing too. There are so many great indie games out there. I think Bioshock deserves a killer adaptation too. I think there's a lot out there that I think has untapped potential.
ScreenRant: I truly look forward to getting the word out about Biohazard. You crushed it, and everybody else crushed it on this.
Chandler Riggs: I do want to plug just a couple of in-person screenings and Q&A's that we're doing of Biohazard. We have one next Thursday, October 29. It's Nightmare on Franklin at the Tampa Theater, and me and a bunch of the cast and crew are gonna be there, answering some questions. It's back in Tampa, so it's gonna be a blast. We got another one at LA Comic Con, actually, we're doing one there on November 1, and again with more cast and crew there to answer questions with a live screening Q&A. So, yeah, I'm excited, should be fun.
Both the regular and uncensored versions of Biohazard: A Live-Action Resident Evil 7 Short Fan Film are available to stream on Chandler Riggs' YouTube channel!
Horror franchise Resident Evil started off as an acclaimed survival horror video game series on the Sony PlayStation, with new entries released for each subsequent console generation. Outside of games, the hit franchise includes feature films, a TV show, comics, and novels.
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