Warning: This post contains spoilers for Resident Evil.
For a movie based on a video game series that’s made a name for itself as a testament to human resilience and survival against impossible odds, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil sure serves up a brutal kick in the teeth of an ending. For fans of the video games’ traditionally triumphant resolutions, it’s a narrative decision that’s likely to be divisive. But if you’re willing to lean in to the Weapons filmmaker’s penchant for expectations-upending final acts, it’s one that offers some good old fashioned horror nihilism.
Cregger’s adaptation tells an original story in the Resident Evil universe rather than faithfully adapting any of the games, building on previous films, or pulling in legacy characters. Still, the movie manages to successfully capture the atmosphere and experience of playing through a new installment in gaming’s most storied survival horror franchise, first launched in 1996 by Japanese developer Capcom. Like a fair share of Resident Evil leads who came before him, our protagonist, medical courier Bryan Hodukavich (Austin Abrams), finds himself thrown into a nightmarish fight for survival against uber-aggressive biological monstrosities. Ammo is scarce, obstacles are everywhere, and perhaps most relatably, Bryan has no real idea how to operate the progression of increasingly high-caliber guns he picks up along the way.
The film opens with Bryan—whose newly pregnant girlfriend Michele is waiting at home to discuss their future—accepting a last-minute double-pay delivery job transporting a high-priority Schedule A organ carrier case up through the snowy mountains to Raccoon City General Hospital.
Unfortunately, Bryan’s situation quickly turns from dangerous to unbelievable to dire after he accidentally hits a woman with his car who turns out to have been infected by a mutating zombie virus that the shadowy Umbrella Corporation accidentally unleashed on the city a few hours prior.
By the time Bryan learns he is actually carrying the final ingredient needed to synthesize a cure to the virus, he has already fought off several infected individuals, who, to his horror, didn’t exactly die after being shot in the head. Instead, their remains fused together to transform into a grotesque, Cronenberg-esque amalgamation of limbs and tentacles intent on hunting Bryan down. Not to mention Bryan was also been bitten by one of the aforementioned infected, making his race for an antidote all the more pressing.
How does Resident Evil end?
Despite having to face off with a horde of dive-bombing zombies, an acid-vomiting monster, and a heavily infected maternity ward, among other horrors, Bryan does eventually make it to the secure lab on the 28th floor of Raccoon City General Hospital. However, by the time he hands the key to the cure over to a team led by Umbrella Corporation scientist Carl (Zach Cherry), he has already started to transform.
Just as the team completes the antidote, which they plan to hand over to a unit of National Guard soldiers set to land on the roof at any minute, Bryan’s grotesquely mutated limbs start lashing out and savagely killing the scientists before dragging their corpses in to meld with Bryan’s body. Bryan begs for one of the scientists to simply stick him with the syringe of cure and end it, but they’re all either quickly incapacitated or too frightened. Eventually, monster Bryan crashes through a window with the last-surviving scientist in his grip and there’s a final chance for the technician to inject him with the antidote. It seems like he’s about to succeed, but in a bleak twist, Bryan knocks the syringe from his hand and it goes crashing down dozens of stories into the darkness below. Bryan roars as the National Guard helicopters circle, and it seems like all hope of preventing a total zombie apocalypse are gone.
There is no moment of triumph or last-minute turn of the tide. Instead, the screen cuts to black and the movie is over, leaving you contemplating just how futile all of Bryan’s efforts were. To fans who were hoping for a more conventional Resident Evil final boss battle, it’s an ending that may come off as a bit mean-spirited. But according to Cregger, he felt just as assured about this choice of kicker as he did about the much-discussed climax of Weapons.
“I remember when I thought of that moment and that was an ‘aha’ moment. I was excited. I was like, ‘That is perfect,’” he told Men’s Health. “There’s a similar thing at the end of Resident Evil and I remember, when I had the idea of how this movie should end, I was like, ‘That is it.’ And it feels good when you know you can stop searching. I’m always looking for the next, ‘How can I improve every idea?’ and sometimes when you get an idea where you’re like, ‘Nope, that’s what it is,’ that’s a good feeling. It’s like, ‘That is a solid table with four legs. Leave it alone.’ It’s nice when that’s the end of the movie too. If you know that you can stick the landing, then you’re in good shape.”
However, Bryan dying an agonizing and untimely death apparently doesn’t necessarily mean Cregger is done with Resident Evil as a whole. “I can’t help thinking about other places this story could go. I’ve got ideas,” he told the Playlist. “Let’s see what happens.”
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