Resident Evil director Zach Cregger has revealed that the movie’s slightly more hopeful ending wasn’t originally on the cards – and was only added in after footage was shot as part of the filmmaker’s “contingency plan.”
Major spoilers for the Resident Evil movie ending follow.
Poor Bryan. The luckless courier was put through the wringer as he scrambled from undead set-piece to undead set-piece in Cregger’s hellish take on Raccoon City.
Partway through the film, Austin Abrams’ protagonist is bitten by a child. In Resident Evil’s world, that usually only means one outcome. However, by the finale, he makes his way to the Umbrella Corporation lab as the company hunts for a cure to the zombie outbreak.
Sadly for Bryan – and the Umbrella researchers – he doesn’t hold off long enough, eventually mutating into a twisted B.O.W. that will be all too familiar to fans of the game.
In the original version of Resident Evil, Cregger (speaking to Collider) explained that Bryan’s humanity had completely gone by that point, with no semblance of the person he once was remaining amid a mass of tentacles and gooey eyes, despite Umbrella still trying to inject him with the cure.
“One of the missteps I made early on was not [showing Bryan’s desperation for a cure],” Cregger said. “We reorganized the chain of events. Thank god I shot for this as a contingency plan; it was my plan B.”
Cregger continued, “Originally in the script, that scientist pulls the needle out, [Bryan] grabs the woman’s face, he drops it, and it shatters, and then the rest of the movie is just [Bryan] killing the scientist and people were just like, ‘No, it’s over!’
“But I shot that shot of the scientist putting the needle in his pocket just ’cause I had a feeling. I was like, ‘I feel like I’m going to need that.'”
Cregger’s instinct, as to be expected from the mind behind Barbarian and Weapons, was correct.
“It keeps the stakes all the way until the end. It’s like ‘save him, save him’. Whereas before it’s just like: ‘Kill them, I guess, kill them all.'”
Resident Evil is now out in cinemas.
For more, check out the collection of Resident Evil Easter eggs we spotted during the runtime, plus a larger look at how Resident Evil connects to the games.
Plus, we glance ahead to all the new horror movies in the works that are getting set to scare us silly.