Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” reboot, released on September 18, has divided horror film lovers and video game aficionados with some embracing it as a stand alone horror film and others wanting a story more closely tied to the games. But beneath its comedy, gore and survival-horror elements, is a story about transformation.
The “Resident Evil” franchise originally takes place in 1996 in a Midwest city called Raccoon City, but Cregger’s adaptation is set in 2026 after a heavy snowfall. A hidden leak of a deadly virus, which was already affecting residents, is slowly spreading beyond the city. Bryan (Austin Abrams), the protagonist, who is just an ordinary young adult working as a medical courier, is dispatched to make a delivery to the Raccoon City General Hospital, unaware of the dangers ahead of him.
The resulting film is a survival-comedy-horror, as viewers follow the inept Bryan and watch him continuously fail to use a gun. Watching the film evokes a similar experience to playing the video games, with constant unease of what’s ahead and how to survive as resources are limited while facing life on the line.
At the end of the film, Bryan is infected and thus twists into a monstrous creature, but his eyes remain painfully human. Wide and desperate, pleading to be saved before the creature swallows him whole.
The horror of this ending isn’t simply that Bryan is becoming a monster, it is also that some recognizable part of him remains trapped inside.
That final moment invites a deeper interpretation of the film. Through the lens of Bryan, his infection becomes a metaphor for addiction. His struggle to fight the illness reflects the difficulty of fighting an unhealthy dependency and wanting to gain control while feeling increasingly powerless against the evil that takes over.
While Cregger has not publicly established the connection or representation of this addiction metaphor, he has previously explored substance abuse in his projects. While discussing his 2025 horror and psychological thriller “Weapons,” with The Hollywood Reporter, he described the movie as a metaphor for growing up with an alcoholic father and the ways his addiction changed his father’s behavior and the dynamics of his family.
But how does Cregger’s 2026 film resemble addiction?
It is portrayed through Bryan, who becomes a victim of the virus after his horrific journey trying to deliver a package to the hospital.
Bryan is introduced in the film facing major changes in his life; navigating his relationship and facing the fear of becoming a father. Unaware of the contents of the additional delivery task he takes — which contains the cure to the deadly virus — Bryan sets forth on what seems like a routine job, only to find himself caught in the path of an outbreak.
“I’m so f*** sorry, we’re gonna get you to the hospital, ok?” Bryan tells a woman who he accidentally hits with his car, attempting to drive her.
“Oh my god, excuse me,” he tells the lady as she reaches for his face with her bloody arm, signaling to viewers that she is infected. “I need to see,” he lowers her arm out of his view. “You’re good, you’re good. Just a few more miles ok.”
Bryan is portrayed as a witty yet caring man, from being squeamish when seeing blood, to looking after people he has no connection to. Focused on the task ahead, he fails to recognize the warning signs around him as his concern overshadows any sense that he may be in danger.
That instinct continues when he encounters a child in need. He doesn’t immediately recognize that she is infected and even after discovering her tentacle-like foot, Bryan’s first instinct is still to help. When she attacks and bites him, Bryan initially treats the injury as something he can deal with later, unaware that the bite has set his transformation in motion.
Moments after fighting off the monster child, he encounters two employees from the pharmaceutical company, the Umbrella Corporation. It is revealed that their laboratory is responsible for creating the virus that mutates humans into lethal predators and has infected the majority of Raccoon City patients and residents; Bryan is delivering the cure.
“Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me that what I have in this cooler is the cause of all this sh** that’s been going on?” Bryan asks the Umbrella Corp. employees.
“No.. the cause of the sh** is something that got out of control back at the lab,” the employee tells Bryan.
Now this comparison may seem like a stretch, but the idea of a pharmaceutical corporation contributing to a public health crisis is all too familiar with the United States’ history of the opioid epidemic that stretches back decades.
In 1990, the opioid epidemic spiked as marketing for these drugs intensified with an increase of prescription painkillers. As opioids became more readily available to patients, the surge fueled the ongoing epidemic, according to Northwestern’s Institute of Public Health and Medicine.
Many have fallen into an opioid use disorder stemming from being prescribed synthetic opioids and not given the proper resources to deal with the after-effects of hard drugs. But it’s not only opioids: it’s morphine, oxycodone, methamphetamine and many more. The danger of these drugs is that once exposed, a person can become highly addicted.
Reading through the lens of addiction, the bite that infects Bryan can represent the deceptively small beginning of something that later becomes impossible to control, as the consequences of his exposure become increasingly difficult to escape.
His arm deteriorates, dark veins spread across his skin like a web moving from his arm towards his neck. His body becomes evidence of the virus inside him.
The film’s grotesque imagery can evoke the physical consequences associated with prolonged substance use. Injection drug use, for example, can infect and destroy the human flesh; frequent injections can result in scarring, “which develops when the skin cannot regenerate tissue properly and can spread beyond the injection site,” according to the American Addiction Centers.
But Bryan’s transformation isn’t just physical.
By the end of the film, Bryan succeeds in delivering the antidote to the remaining scientists at Raccoon City General Hospital, helping bring humanity closer to a cure. But, as he watches from afar, his infection has already begun taking over.
Bryan attempts to fight the illness rather than surrender to it, but eventually he loses control.
The more the infection spreads, the harder it becomes for Bryan to separate his own intentions from what the virus is forcing him to do.
The person who entered the “Resident Evil” story as someone willing to help a stranger, becomes increasingly capable of violence. In the final scene at the hospital, Bryan begins to mutate and massacre the five scientists, all while repeatedly begging for someone to inject him with the cure.
It’s a bloody final scene, yet it’s heartbreaking as the camera closes in on Bryan’s final transformation with his pupils completely dark and enchanting soft vocals closes the film.
He didn’t want to hurt anyone. All he wanted was to remain himself and be cured.
It would be easy to look at the infected zombie-like people throughout the 95-minute film and see them as representations of those consumed by addiction. But this risks reducing people with substance-use disorders to the very monster they are fighting.
In “Resident Evil,” the infected become people that are frightening and murderous because their behaviors and bodies have changed, yet the film reminds us through Bryan’s journey that there is still someone underneath.
For audiences who have seen first-hand how addiction changes a loved one’s life, Bryan’s transformation can evoke a different kind of horror: watching a person remain recognizable while something increasingly powerful takes control of their life.