Movie review
November 24, 2021 · 107 min · R
Woke Score
Lower is better
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.
Woke representation / casting
Prominent lead roles include actors of mixed heritage (e.g., Avan Jogia as Leon Kennedy and Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine) that create visible mismatches with traditional game depictions of the characters as white; however, this was not marketed as identity signaling or quota casting and appears incidental to commercial choices.
Woke political dialogue
No activist, identity-based, or social-justice dialogue appears; conversations focus on corporate secrets, survival tactics, and immediate threats as in the source games.
Identity-driven story themes
Core story centers on corporate bioweapon disaster and zombie survival with no arcs tied to race, gender identity, representation, or modern social issues.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Umbrella Corporation is shown as a greedy, unethical pharmaceutical giant that destroys the town, a classic horror villain setup; no modern activist reframing, anti-capitalist sermons, patriarchy critiques, or identity-based systemic attacks.
Review
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a 2021 action-horror reboot that combines story elements from the first two Resident Evil video games into one narrative set in 1998. A small group of survivors including Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and Chris Redfield fight to escape a zombie outbreak unleashed by the corrupt Umbrella Corporation in a dying Midwest town. The film features a diverse cast in prominent roles with some visual differences from the original game designs but contains no identity-driven themes, activist dialogue, or social-justice messaging.
Woke character or canon changes
Some plot compression and minor arc tweaks (such as Leon’s rookie emphasis) occur for film runtime, but these are ordinary adaptation choices with no identity or DEI motivation behind them.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
A small number of online fans specifically called out casting decisions like Avan Jogia as Leon as DEI or race-swapped and labeled the project forced diversity; this remained limited and secondary to widespread complaints about bad effects, pacing, and character writing.
Creator track record context
Key creatives including writer-director Johannes Roberts and the listed producers have long careers in straightforward commercial horror and action films with no patterns of activist, queer-focused, or identity-politics work according to cached and researched profiles.
Production
