SPOILER WARNING: The following contains spoilers for "Resident Evil: Outbreak Night." Proceed with caution.
SPOILER WARNING: The following contains spoilers for "Resident Evil: Outbreak Night." Proceed with caution.
SPOILER WARNING: The following contains spoilers for "Resident Evil: Outbreak Night." Proceed with caution.
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The new Resident Evil adaptation "Resident Evil: Outbreak Night" earned plenty of positive reviews following its release, but director Zach Cregger recently revealed in an interview with Collider that the film originally had a different ending. He ultimately realized the initial cut eliminated the finale’s suspense too early. Fortunately, backup footage shot during production allowed him to rework the sequence into the version audiences now see.
In the film’s final act, Austin Abrams’ Bryan goes on a killing spree inside an Umbrella Corporation laboratory as the t-Virus increasingly takes control of his body. The finished version keeps the cure in play, however, with Bryan struggling to reach the syringe and inject himself even as he loses his grip on reality. That gives audiences reason to hope, right up to the end, that he might still be saved.
Cregger said the original script took a more direct approach. After a scientist pulled out the syringe containing the cure, Bryan’s attack would cause it to fall and shatter immediately. That would have eliminated any chance of saving the character before the climax had even begun.
“Originally, once the scientist pulled out the needle, Austin would grab the woman’s face, and he would drop the syringe on the floor and it would break,” Cregger said.
The team eventually realized that choice undercut the finale’s tension. According to Cregger, destroying the cure too soon reduced everything that followed to Bryan simply killing the scientists one by one. Audiences would feel as though the story were already over, leaving them with little reason to remain invested in his fate.
Luckily, Cregger followed his instincts during production and filmed an alternate shot in which the scientist slips the syringe into his pocket. He also captured backup footage in Prague showing Bryan attempting to inject himself with the cure.
“Thank God I shot that as a backup, because we ended up using it,” he said. The revised version keeps the cure within reach until the closing moments, leaving audiences hoping Bryan can save himself before plunging from Raccoon City’s tallest building instead of watching the sequence as a straightforward kill-them-all rampage.
Cregger believes the change allowed the finale to sustain its emotional weight and sense of danger until the very end. As for the abandoned version, he has already ruled out releasing a so-called “director’s cut,” meaning audiences are unlikely to ever see the alternate ending.