Spoiler alert! We're discussing the ending of "Resident Evil" (in theaters now), so turn away if you haven't seen the movie and don't want to know what happens.
Ever think about how each of the monsters you mow down while playing a survival horror video game came to be? You will after watching "Resident Evil."
The new horror film based on the video game franchise ends on a major bummer. After Austin Abrams' Bryan, a medical courier, is hired to transport a package during a zombie apocalypse, he discovers he holds the key to creating a cure for the infection taking over Raccoon City. So Bryan risks his life to get it to a group of scientists holed up at a hospital. But by the time he makes it there, he has already started to transform into an infected
creature, having been bitten earlier in the movie.
In the final minutes, Bryan loses control and attacks the scientists in their lab. They do manage to make the cure, but the syringe falls off the building after Bryan kills a scientist who was trying to save him. The final shot shows a transformed, mutated Bryan growling as helicopters approach.
Speaking with USA TODAY, director Zach Cregger explains his decision to end the film on such a dark note.
"I was writing my way there with my buddy [and cowriter] Shay [Hatten], and we were getting into the lab, and we were thinking, 'How's this going to go? You know, obviously, he's got to get saved,'" he says. "And I was kind of dreading the ending, because I was like, 'Then somehow, he's got to get stuck with the needle, and he gets cured, and then what? The movie's over?' I was like, 'That just doesn't feel cool. That just doesn't feel fun.' "
While writing, Cregger realized that having Bryan get saved "felt like it was going to be kind of an expected, 'womp womp.' " So he decided to swerve.
"Having him maul all the scientists and become the source of fear, and then realize at the end, when the credits flash, that we've been watching a monster's origin story this whole time, that felt like, 'Dude, that is great,' " he says. "And once that idea came, there was no going back."
The filmmaker also liked the notion of ending the movie "on a bit of a cliffhanger," with a sudden cut to the credits before the Bryan monster has been dealt with, even though it's still the "end of the story."
"Whether the monster kills all the helicopters or not is kind of immaterial," he says. "The point is, it's over. He's not going back. This is what he is now. And the movie is obviously a pretty ham-fisted exploration of resistance to change. His problem at the beginning of the movie is he so doesn't want change to come. In the end, I just like that he's undergone a transformation that he could never have imagined."
While the film doesn't directly connect to any of the "Resident Evil" video games, it's not hard to imagine the Bryan monster as any creature that players have faced in the games.
"There's all sorts of wreckage you encounter in the game, and you can only imagine how this became what it became," Cregger says. "So I just like the idea that every little monster you see in these games had some person behind it at some point, and that person had their own story."
Abrams recalls finding the ending "shocking," but he admired the "gutsy" choice not to have Bryan get cured, even after he undergoes a ton of personal growth. One of the last things Bryan does is leave a voice note on his phone for his girlfriend, telling her that he has realized he wants to have a child with her and was wrong to freak out about her pregnancy earlier. It's not clear, though, if she will receive the message.
"It is quite tragic in a lot of ways," Abrams says. "This is a dude that really became, throughout this process, more of a man, and came into his own and realized what he really wanted in life. He makes this voice note for his girlfriend, where he completely 180s and realizes what truly matters to him. But he doesn't know if she's ever going to hear that. As far as she knows, he was a coward, and he doesn't want to have a kid and a life with her."
Abrams adds, "It's kind of a tragedy of the regular Joe. He does this insane thing for this big company that he didn't need to do, [because] they [messed] up. The more I think about it, it's kind of sad and beautiful."
The ending isn't the only gutsy choice in the film: One of the other most shocking moments occurs earlier, when Bryan finds a scared little girl in an RV, but is forced to shoot her after discovering she's infected.
When he first showed the movie, Cregger was nervous about how the audience might react to a child meeting such a violent end.
"I was like, 'Are people just going to walk out of this movie?'" he says. "I mean, he shoots a little girl. He blows her head off with a shotgun. I was like, 'Is this going to be a step too far?' But I have never had a single person comment on it or come up to me and complain. Everybody seems to be like, 'Yeah, dude, that was kind of the right move. He had to!' "
Is there a 'Resident Evil' post-credits scene? And will be there be a sequel?
If you thought you might see more about what happens to Bryan, or perhaps get a game character cameo, after the credits, you're out of luck: The film has no post-credits scene.
And Cregger playfully says he's "not going to bite" when asked about where a possible "Resident Evil" sequel stands. If he were to make one, it wouldn't be his next film: That would be "The Flood," a sci-fi movie set for a 2028 release.
"I mean, never say never," Cregger says regarding another "Resident Evil" film. "I know what my next movie is. But on the other side of that, who knows? You never know."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Spoilers! Zach Cregger explains that shocking 'Resident Evil' ending
