This article contains massive Resident Evil spoilers.The ending of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is its most twisted and ambitious element. After a mean, lean, mutated-heart-on-its-sleeve B-movie where we watch a hapless millennial named Bryan (Austin Abrams) bungle his way through the zombie apocalypse consuming Raccoon City, the final act of is where everything comes to a gooey head.Determined initially to reach Raccoon City General Hospital to deliver what he is led to believe is an organ that will save a child’s life, poor Bryan in the end must realize that he’s attempting to save his own skin instead. What he carries is some mystery compound that will help create a potential cure for the T-virus ravaging Raccoon City. Apparently the Umbrella Corporation—which also created the virus bringing about Raccoon City’s doom—ordered the compound Bryan carries due to “an abundance of caution.” It clearly wasn’t enough.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});In the movie’s final moments, Bryan delivers the compound, hoping that it will save him from the viral infection rotting away in his arm. But in the ultimate bit of mean-spirited luck, Bryan cannot hold out the five or so minutes left for a cure (not that I think it would’ve likely helped him at this point). Instead he mutates into a monstrosity reminiscent of William Birkin’s many grotesque forms in the PS1/N64 video game, Resident Evil 2. He has a giant eyeball-tumor growing out of his shoulder, a second mouth in his belly, and tentacled arms that help him drag all those Umbrella scientists into his tummy fangs, swallowing them whole and adding them to the fuck pit that is his body. In the end, he doesn’t even care about the cure, letting it fall into the distant rubble beneath the skyline while screaming in hideous defiance at the incoming National Guard.To be perfectly honest, as a fan of horror cinema, this ending is the weakest element of the film for me. I can enjoy a mean-spirited, or even bleakly humorous horror movie finale. Sam Raimi made a cottage industry out of them with the conclusion of nearly every Evil Dead movie (and go back and watch the original ending of Army of Darkness to make the hat trick complete). Raimi can also pursue a bleak ending with a sense of bitter, even tragic irony (see: Drag Me to Hell).On a purely cinematic level, however, Bryan’s fate plays colder because it seems cruel purely for cruelty’s sake. The film ostensibly wants you to pity him because the whole journey is about Bryan realizing he wants to be a father–-an epiphany that could’ve saved his life if he was home with his girlfriend instead of looking for excuses to stay on the road. There is even irony in this because he initially thinks he is doing a good deed by taking this job since he’ll be saving some kid’s life. In the end, though, it was because he tried to save a sweet, angelic child that he got infected in the first place. Thematically it kind of works, but by juxtaposing him leaving a tragic audio message of contrition to his girlfriend and then comically turning into a monster that slaughters a bunch of comic relief red shirts fails to tonally blend. It’s more flippant than fitting.Nonetheless, I would argue that the ending, like pretty much the rest of the far more satisfying and gleeful movie, should leave video game fans euphoric because of how snugly it fits into the canon.To be sure, there’s been plenty of vitriol from self-styled guardians of the Resident Evil lore and mythology, who in recent months have denounced this movie, sight unseen, because it doesn’t star Leon S. Kennedy, Jill Valentine, or one of the Redfield siblings, nor does it take place in the 1990s and feature the Nemesis, a Licker, Mr. X, or the like. It even seems to play fast and loose with the biological symptoms that differentiate the T-virus, G-virus, and later games’ dreaded Las Plagas parasite.And yet, the movie gets the aesthetic, style, and vibe of the games intrinsically, so much so that the ending gracefully inserts itself into a version of the mythology. Whatever criticisms I can sling, this conclusion is very much apiece with the world that Jill, Leon, Chris, and Claire traverse through, one quivering flashlight movement at a time.Those games are famous in a lot of fans’ minds for their heroes, but back in the ‘90s, the original Raccoon City trilogy was more famous for its ruined world and atmosphere. Everywhere you went, be it the old Spencer Mansion, Raccoon City Police Department, or a popular Clock Tower, there were signs of lives shattered and stories abruptly ended. There were the annihilated cops who had a surprise welcome party for Leon still hanging from the walls by the time the rookie gets there to find their undying remains; a journalist hiding from William Birkin inside the jail cell beneath; and even a little girl who lost her parents in a shameless lift from James Cameron’s Aliens.And then there were the journals. Everywhere you went, there were diaries, letters, and farewell notes from working contractor stiffs who got roped into Umbrella’s orbit; scientists who have a lot more complicity; gun shop owners trying to keep the lights on and the zombies out; and hapless bystanders who lost touch with their wife or family. They left behind messages of doom and despair that with the better written elements gave the games a sense of eerie melancholy (and in other instances unintentional giggles).Zach Cregger and Austin Abrams’ Bryan is exactly one such story that Jill or Leon could’ve found while ruffling through the files scattered about a spooky parking garage. This is by design.In many ways, Bryan’s story mirrors Leon and Claire’s in Resident Evil 2, or Carlos in Resident Evil 3: an outsider who comes to town on the worst possible day and seeks safety in a civic institution (in this case the hospital instead of the police department or city hall) and instead finds Umbrella’s mad science run amok. Alas, Bryan isn’t the hero of his story. He’s just another doomed side story in the Raccoon mythos.The audio recording he left for his girlfriend in the parking garage is exactly the type of artifact the aforementioned game characters would discover while rummaging through the hospital grounds, if they had gone there, only updated to an iPhone message here, befitting the 2020s facelift of the story. Hell, chances are Leon would discover that recording and, over the course of several encounters, realized the mutant beastie with multiple arms, legs, and faces poking out of it is that poor bastard who says he is ready to be a father!While Cregger slightly shifts the story for a modern sensibility to 2026, as well as moving the fall of Raccoon City to wintertime instead of autumn, he has basically created a side story that fits perfectly with the world of those old PlayStation games. Bryan doesn’t help create a cure that saves Raccoon City, the hospital, or even himself. He’s just one more piece of meat fed into the grinder, leaving behind a sad song to lament over. Perhaps in this 2026 telling, he even does end up getting put down for good by Leon S. Kennedy, Ada Wong, and a well timed quip.It’s so classic Resident Evil that all that’s missing is Bryan leaving his phone beside an old typewriter. If fans can’t see that, maybe they don’t really know their beloved games.Resident Evil is in theaters now.The post Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil Ending Should Make Hardcore Gamers Happy appeared first on Den of Geek.