Austin Abrams shot Resident Evil without having played Resident Evil

Austin Abrams leads Zach Cregger's Resident Evil adaptation, in theaters now, and he came to the part cold: he has said he wasn't familiar with the games or the earlier films before taking the role.

He described the horror-gaming genre in his own terms — it "really goddamn rocks your nervous" — and called the stunt shoot "harrowing," summing up the stakes with a line any actor doing practical horror work understands: "You don't wanna f*ck up."

Coming in unfamiliar is not necessarily a handicap. Cregger's approach reportedly puts the audience in the player's point of view, and an actor discovering the rules as he goes can be a decent stand-in for a player doing the same.