[SPOILERS] Resident Evil: Death Island Plot Summary

Contained below is an extremely detailed summary of Resident Evil: Death Island. If you do not want to be spoiled, please do not read this page.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

In 1998, during the Raccoon City incident, Umbrella dispatches a SWAT team to rescue Umbrella executives and government officials from the city. Dylan Blake is one of those; however, everyone on his team except him and his best friend and squad teammate, JJ, are infected and mutate. Trapped in a laboratory with their mutating squad, Dylan and JJ are instructed by their superiors to eliminate the infected in order to be extracted. Dylan refuses to kill anyone, thinking there’s a way to save the people from death. JJ disagrees with Dylan; eventually their squad become zombies and begin overpowering them, leading to JJ eliminating the swarm while Dylan falls to the ground unable to handle the reality of his teammates dying.

In 2015, a number of people in San Francisco begin dying after exhibiting signs of T-Virus infection. Unlike previous strains of the virus, the people are inexplicably infected despite not being bitten by other infected or otherwise inhaling the disease.

Leon in SF on behalf of the DSO. Ingrid Hunnigan instructs him to secure Dr. Antonio Taylor, a scientist whose knowledge is valuable to the US government and other countries, as well as terrorists. Leon locates an industrial truck with Dr. Taylor in it, and pursues it in his motorcycle, but Maria Gomez intercepts Leon and causes him to crash his motorcycle, leaving him unable to rescue Taylor.

On the same day, Claire Redfield of TerraSave is called in to a SF beach to investigate an orca’s carcass that has washed ashore. It has massive bite marks too big for any marine animal to have caused it, which suspects a BOW is the culprit. Claire takes samples of the carcass for further investigation.

Meanwhile, the BSAA are also in SF inspecting the home of a potential T-Virus infected. Jill Valentine, having recently completed rehab, has returned to the field and has gone ahead of her unit in investigating the home, ignoring orders from her captain. Jill finds the mutated resident and manages to subdue it before the rest of the BSAA and her captain, Chris Redfield, arrive at the scene. Chris reprimands Jill for ignoring his orders, while Jill justifies her actions by saying she doesn’t want to wait to potentially saves lives.

Chris and Jill visit Rebecca in a laboratory. Rebecca explains to Chris that Jill’s defiance is due to the guilt she felt when she did terrible things under Wesker’s mind control. Chris asks Jill to recuse herself from the operation, which Jill firmly declines to do despite Chris’ pleas and his worry that something will happen to her. Jill recalls being under Wesker’s control and wanting nothing more than to kill Chris, despite her awareness of her surroundings. Jill wants to atone for the things she did. Chris reminds Jill that she needs to remember that death isn’t always inevitable, telling her about Piers, who sacrificed himself to save Chris despite Chris’ intention to originally retire and have Piers assume his mantle.

Claire arrives and briefs the three ex-S.T.A.R.S. members on her findings at the beach. Rebecca has examined the samples and identified a modified strain of the T-Virus, which she thankfully has vaccines for. Rebecca has also identified all the victims of the viral outbreak as having recently visited Alcatraz prison island on tours, so the four of them decide to investigate the island themselves to see where the infection is coming from.

Chris, Claire and Jill go to Alcatraz on a tour disguised as tourists. As soon as they arrive, Dylan, who has set up a secret base on the island with Maria as his accomplice, sees that the Redfields and Jill have arrived, and this unleashes the T-Virus on the tour group. Someone, everyone except the Redfields and Jill are infected; the three are able to subdue the zombies hoards, but Jill is separated from the Redfields after the ground beneath her collapses into a sewer tunnel below.

As Jill explores the sewers, she runs into Leon, who’s conducting an investigation of his own, thinking Dr. Taylor is somewhere on the island. Leon and Jill brief each other on their objectives and decide to cooperate. They encounter a bunch of mutated “Marine Lickers” in a sewer tunnel, but the two are able to protect each other from the Lickers before Leon is able to blow them all up with an explosive gas carton.

Chris and Claire find no survivors of the tour group except one person, a man named Tony Davis. He and Claire get off on the wrong foot, with Tony accusing TerraSave of being behind the Harvardville outbreak, before Claire becomes defensive and explains that TerraSave was framed. A few more zombies arrive, and one lightly wounds Tony, but the Redfields clear the hoard, with Claire tending to Tony’s injuries. This changes Tony’s mind about Claire, while Chris reminds Tony that the good guys will cure everyone’s wounds, even if they’re the bad guys. Suddenly, Chris and Claire are pricked in the neck by some mechanical object floating in the air, which causes them to faint. They are soon captured by Taylor and Maria.

Leon and Jill arrive in a laboratory where they see marine BOWs incubating some kind of virus, alongside a weapons depot. They decide to blow the place up, but Dylan interrupts them, telling them to come to the prison cells where Chris and Claire are waiting.

When they awaken, the Redfields find themselves in separate prison cells next to each other, with both, feeling delirious before they realize they’ve been infected with the T-Virus and are slowly mutating. Claire is in the same cell as Tony. Leon and Jill arrive, and Leon identifies Tony as none other than Dr. Antonio Taylor. Leon and Jill subsequently attempt to rescue the Redfields, but are themselves subdued by Dylan, who infects Leon with the T-Virus as well, using a so-called “micro drone” that looks like a mechanical fly and carries a viral dose. Dylan refrains from infecting Jill, instead directing her to shoot Claire before she can mutate and devour Taylor. Dylan is testing Jill to see if she’s willing to sacrifice her friend the same way his best friend and squad mate, JJ, had done in Raccoon City 17 years earlier. (While not explicitly stated in the movie, Dylan also likely knew Jill was immune to the T-Virus and couldn’t be infected.)

Dylan explains to the four veteran fighters why he wants to infect the world; he is seeking revenge for being forced to kill to survive. During the attack in Raccoon City, Dylan was forced to kill JJ after he was bitten by a zombie in order to save himself, a decision that left him traumatized and vengeful. A full on cynic, Dylan finds Jill, Leon and the Redfields to be hypocrites for trying to project entities that Dylan feels are actually evil themselves. Dylan even throws snide at Chris for continuing his career despite losing men in every mission he’s been on. (Ouch!)

Maria arrives and begins attacking Leon, blaming him for her father’s death. Leon realizes that Dylan had been working with Glenn Arias to obtain bioweapons, and Maria was seeking revenge on Leon at the same time.

Meanwhile, Hunnigan contacts Rebecca after having lost contact with Leon two hours prior. Hunnigan explains that Dylan stole information on past incidents dating back to Raccoon City, and stole information on Claire, Chris, Leon and Jill in order to deal with them. Rebecca herself has lost contact with Jill, Chris and Claire, so she gathers her vaccine, assembles a rescue crew and ventures for Alcatraz.

Jill has refused to shoot Claire, so instead, Dylan shoots Taylor himself, mortally wounding the one man who could possibly reverse the stealth T-Virus infections he has been causing. Dylan decides to unleash millions of micro drones, which had been incubating in the laboratory Leon and Jill were in earlier, to upon majors cities of the world. Maria attempts to kill Jill, but Leon saves her by using a flash grenade, giving Jill time to escape. Before Maria can terminate Leon, Dylan asks her to spare him, saying that Leon will soon mutate. Dylan and Maria leave to unleash the T-Virus on the world.

Claire, despite nearing mutation, attempts to stop Taylor from bleeding out. Taylor, moved by Claire’s attempts to save him, offers Claire a password that will give her the opportunity to override the micro drones and prevent them from causing a global pandemic. Taylor dies at this point, but Chris and Leon know that with Jill in pursuit of Dylan, there’s a chance they can still stop this terrorist attack.

Rebecca arrives on the island, but her squad’s boat is attacked by a giant marine BOW, the one responsible for killing Claire’s orca. The marine BOW manages to kill all of the squad, except for Rebecca, who manages to escape thanks to one squad member distract the creature with a grenade. Rebecca runs into Jill in the sewers and they brief each other on the situation. With time running out, Jill directs Rebecca to the others, while she chases Dylan.

Rebecca arrives with her vaccine, curing Leon first. Leon runs after Jill, while Rebecca cures the Redfields right in the nick of time. Rebecca and Redfields decide to follow Leon and Jill after recovering.

Leon runs into Maria on one of the labs. Maria tells Leon she’s glad he survived infection, since she can now avenger her father’s death directly. Maria and Leon do battle fist to fist, with Maria demonstrating Albert Wesker-esque fight prowess and speed, having the upper hand nearly the whole fight. Leon dodges many of Maria’s hits, which damage the equipment in the laboratory. However, Leon, a formidable fighter himself, manages to land a crucial punch and kick on Maria, who gets pushed back far enough to get impaled into a steel pole that was protruding out of a piece of equipment Maria damaged earlier in the fight. As Maria frees herself from the pipe, she collapses onto the ground, dead, to which Leon smugly tells her to finally go be with her father.

Jill finds Dylan in the armory, where he finally infects himself with the T-Virus. He drops himself into the ocean, where the marine BOW awaits. It swallows Dylan, thus fusing the two together to form a massive fish-like bioweapon that can swim or crawl on land very quickly.

The five protagonists reassemble and decide to take the Dylan BOW down. They raid the armory and use any weapon they can find on Dylan. Rebecca, Claire and Chris try firing rockets at it simultaneously, but the Dylan BOW is so massive and sturdy that the weapons don’t do anything to it. With the micro drones ready to begin flying away from the island, Leon instructs Claire and Rebecca to go to the laboratory and stop the micro drones from escaping using Taylor’s override password.

Chris, Leon and Jill continue to fight Dylan to no avail. Jill finds a plasma rifle (very similar to the one she used in the RE3 remake), which she thinks should be able to take Dylan down. Chris and Leon distract Dylan long enough for Jill to land a shot, but just like Nemesis 17 years prior, one shot isn’t quite enough, and the plasma rifle needs to recharge. However, this time, Dylan, who is still quite coherent (all things considered), destroys the rifle and leaves Chris, Leon and Jill on the defensive.

Meanwhile, Rebecca manages to override Dylan’s micro drones. Before Claire can terminate them, Rebecca has another idea: to control the drones and have them all simultaneously infect Dylan with dangerously high doses of the virus. Rebecca’s plan works, and Dylan begins to crumble and fail. Dylan attempts to leave the armory by swimming for open water, hoping to spread the virus that way instead. Chris and Leon find a massive rocket launcher that is so heavy that they both need to carry it; Jill distracts Dylan long enough to lead him under a marine hangar door; Chris and Leon shoot the door, causing it to fall onto Dylan, finally killing him.

The five protagonists escape the armory and emerge onto the island dock, where they are rescued by either the BSAA or DSO. The five muse about their predicament just moments ago, before congratulating themselves on surviving once again. Chris and Jill do a first bump, with Chris telling Jill it was nice to have her back, realizing she was right earlier about the need to make quick decisions even if the odds are against them.