The first Resident Evil game released in 1996 for the original PlayStation and is credited with revolutionizing the survival horror genre. Resident Evil was also revolutionary in that it allowed the player to choose between two main characters at the beginning, and this choice would affect everything from the game’s difficulty to the characters the player would interact with during the story. These two main characters, Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield, have since gone on to become gaming icons.
Many actors have played the characters over the series’ 26-year history, and the Resident Evil stars have seen multiple redesigns. On the original PlayStation, every character appeared as a cartoonish mass of early 3D polygons, but Resident Evil did feature live-action cutscenes for its opening and multiple endings, to give players a more substantial impression of the characters.
Now some of these original live-action Resident Evil actors are reprising their iconic roles for the first time since 1996, in a fan film that is reportedly titled The Keeper. Very little is known about the project other than it is based on the world of Resident Evil, and that three actors from the original 1996 game are reprising their roles for it. These actors are Charlie Kraslavsky, Greg Smith, and Eric Pirius, who play Chris Redfield, Barry Burton, and Albert Wesker respectively.
Some on set photographs gives fans a look at Charlie wearing Chris’s BSAA gear and looking a lot more modern than in his 1996 Chris outfit. The Keeper from the reported title references the Keeper’s Diary from the first Resident Evil, from which the iconic “Itchy, Tasty” line derives. But there is some confusion as to which Resident Evil fan film, if any, these photos are from, as there are actually two RE fan films in development titled The Keeper.
One film was teased back in 2020 by the popular RE community YouTube channel Residence of Evil, which announced it was helping to develop a fan film with director Shawn Lebert, but Residence of Evil founder J.J. denies these photos being from their film, which is still in development. However, there is another project titled The Keeper created by Kresimir Knezovic and Andrew Saullo for the YouTube channel TheatricalChicken. A concept trailer for this fan film was published on March 25 on TheatricalChicken’s YouTube channel, but it is not clear how Chris Redfield in a BSAA uniform would fit into its concept.
Charlie Kraslavsky has confirmed that the elusive project will be uploaded to YouTube in the next few weeks, and it will surely bring a rush of nostalgia back for original 1996 Resident Evil fans. Many fans have also sent the on set photographs to the makers of Netflix’s upcoming Resident Evil series in the hopes of securing a cameo for these original S.T.A.R.S. members.
