Resident Evil Requiem’s secret hero is the “damsel in distress” that redefines the trope – and continues the franchise’s mutated definition of girlhood

Of all the places a little girl could grow up, beneath Umbrella Corporation’s thumb is one of the worst. The evil pharmaceutical front and its rival, The Connections, likes turning girlhood into a bioweapon, and Resident Evil Requiem continues a new trend for Capcom in demonstrating that as painfully as possible. The horror game makes orphan Emily suffer even more – in the sense of her dignity – than dual protagonists Leon Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft, but Resident Evil Requiem also upends the ancient trope that young ladies are powerless.

Instead, in the past three Resident Evil installments, young ladies are infected. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard introduced us to Eveline, black mold that took the shape of a homicidal 10-year-old, while Resident Evil Village demonstrated how much trouble an infant can cause if it’s also a superhuman like Rosemary Winters. Resident Evil Requiem is at its best blending those two contradictory ideas – that a mutant child is both watery-eyed and innocent, as well as capable of demolishing the United States.