Resident Evil: The Stunt That Went Horribly Wrong (& Controversy) Explained

In September of 2015, a stunt went horribly wrong during the filming of the sixth and final installment of the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. During the filming of the movie, which was written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson and released in 2016, stuntwoman Olivia Jackson—the stunt double for actress Milla Jovovich, who portrays the character Alice in the franchise—nearly died.

Before becoming a stunt double in the Resident Evil franchise, Jackson was a stunt double for Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road and also worked on Star Wars and Marvel movies. Following the 2015 accident, her career as a stunt woman came to an abrupt halt. The accident happened while Jackson, a former South African model, was racing on a motorcycle on an empty highway west of Pretoria. She crashed into a crane-mounted camera and suffered critical injuries. Her facial bones were crushed, and she also suffered a severed artery in her neck, multiple broken ribs, a shattered scapula, a broken clavicle, and torn fingers. Additionally, five nerves were torn from her spinal cord. Jackson had to have her arm amputated after being placed in a medically induced coma for 17 days, and also had a thumb amputated.

Jackson has stated that on the day of the accident, she was originally supposed to film a fight scene, but there was a last-minute change. She was instead asked to perform a complex motorcycle scene in poor weather conditions. The incident has proven to be controversial, and a four-year legal battle followed. Less than a year after the accident, Jackson sued the stunt coordinator and his company, the film driver, the boom operator, and the stunt vehicle company for negligence. In 2017, she sued the production company Davis Films/Impact Pictures.

In her filings, Jackson stated that the catastrophic accident happened because the production team valued financial concerns over the safety of the cast and crew. “The scene involved a vehicle fitted with a mechanical crane attached to a camera driving toward [Jackson], as she sped on her motorcycle directly at the camera,” the suit says. “The camera was supposed to elevate safely above [Jackson] head before she reached it. But the haphazardly planned stunt went terribly wrong.” The defendants denied Jackson’s allegations. Davis Films stated that Jackson drove too fast, and was aware of the risks at hand. Jackson also accused the producers of misleading her into thinking the insurance company would pay for her injuries. Ultimately, the High Court of South Africa dismissed Jackson’s claims, moving the case to the Road Accident Fund of South Africa, which covers all users of the country’s roads against injuries sustained in motor vehicle accidents.

In April of 2020, Jackson won a court ruling in South Africa’s High Court, which found Roland Hilton Melville – the driver of the vehicle on which the camera was mounted – negligent. The ruling determined that South Africa’s Road Accident Fund was liable for damages. Of course, Jackson’s victory was limited. As she told the L.A. Times: “I’ve had so much taken away from me. I can’t ever work again, I don’t have the job that I was extremely successful in and that I loved so much.”

Following Jackson’s career-ending accident in September of 2015, it was believed that more intensive safety measures would be implemented on the sets of the Resident Evil movies. Months later, in early December 2015, crew member Ricardo Cornelius was crushed to death by one of the film’s props—a U.S. Army-issue Hummer—while on set. Hollywood suffered even more stunt performer accidents following the ones that occurred on Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. In 2017, stuntwoman Joi “SJ Harris”—double for actress Zazie Beetz—was killed on the set of Deadpool 2 when she lost control of her motorcycle and crashed into Shaw Tower in Vancouver. In 2019, stuntman Joe Watts ended up in intensive care following an accident during the filming of Fast & Furious 9 that left him with a serious head injury. While any on-set injury is tragic, the severity of Jackson’s accident and other stunt performers’ injuries proves the movie industry needs to examine safety regulations and do more to protect people who are working as stunt performers in the future.

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