Resident Evil's Vfx Supervisor Reveals The Creature That Needed A Last-minute Makeover [exclusive]

Sony Pictures

Zach Cregger's fantastic "Resident Evil" movie is practically overrun with delightfully disgusting creatures. As Bryan (Austin Abrams), a courier who picked the wrong night to make an extra delivery, inches closer to his final destination in Raccoon City, he encounters several stomach-churning monsters that were created by a mysterious virus. There's the "Pedestrian," an infected woman who eventually becomes an amalgamation of bodies hot on Bryan's trail as it rolls across the landscape, adding more people to its chaotic mass as it goes; the "Fat Man," a name used by the movie's visual effects team to refer to a huge sewer dweller whose stomach explodes into a parade of rats; and arguably the grossest of the bunch, the "Puker," a man who vomits acid and makes Bryan's ascent to the top floor of a hospital building much more difficult than it would have been otherwise.

I recently spoke with Weta's Kevin Smith, one of the visual effects supervisors on "Resident Evil," and he told me what went into making the Puker scene work:

"They had the Puker practically. There's a guy in a — oh man, it looked pretty miserable to me, standing there looking at him on set. This was just a guy in a latex suit made by Legacy. And they built three, I think there were three stories of an elevator shaft, and they got Bryan in there and they shot all of the plates practically. They even shot a bunch of ... the latex suit had a big tube coming up and coming out here [motions near his neck]. So, it was like, some of that puke is for real that they got [that] day."

To be clear, Smith doesn't mean that anyone actually vomited on set. He's saying that at least some practical fake puke made it into the final scene. But it turns out that scene actually needed a major update at the last minute thanks to the reaction of some test audiences.

Sony Pictures

After digitally enhancing the Puker's practical vomit and making sure it looked believable as it dissolved the elevator around Bryan's feet, Kevin Smith and his team encountered a challenge that would make any visual effects supervisor consider puking themselves. As Smith told me:

"There was a test screening at a certain point, pretty close to the end, where people thought the Puker was too funny. It was too comical and looked a little too much like the guy from 'Ghostbusters,' Slimer. It was very 'Slimer'-esque. So, a note came down from the studio pretty close to the end: 'Hey, can you change what this guy looks like?' 

There was a bit of back and forth with our art department and the clients, and we did a bit of a, not a redesign, but without replacing it in every shot, because we didn't have enough time to do that, 'Can we put something over the top of him that helps it look less slimy and looks a little more monster-y?' So, we did basically a bunch of face replacements on the Puker [...] We designed a new scarier one and replaced it."

"Resident Evil" walks a fine line between comedy and horror. Bryan's constant muttering provides some nice levity, but it never tips things into full-blown comedic territory. It sounds like the Slimer-esque Puker pushed test audiences on the wrong side of that line, and that may have been part of the humor Zach Cregger removed based on feedback from test audiences. Whatever the case, it sounds like it was a wise move to revamp the character — even if it was tough to accomplish in the moment.

"That was exciting, as close as it was to the end," Smith said with a wry smile, shrewdly acknowledging the enormity of the last-minute request without ever complaining about it. While the visual effects in this particular scene are blatantly obvious, the movie overall contains more VFX than you'd probably guess.

"Resident Evil" is still in theaters.