Here are seven films where the villains win in the end. Most people go to see a movie to escape to another world for a while, distract us from our own lives and our own problems, and just enjoy two hours of something different. Usually, this escape means that we as the audience want to see the good guys win, the bad guys fail, and get a happy ending in the credits. Fortunately, there are a few examples where the opposite is happening.
Fun Games (2007)
A more obscure entry on a list of films where the villain(s) win in the end, an American remake by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke based on his own film set a decade earlier, the film follows an unhinged teenage couple as they ‘they beat, torture and kill a family of three. The film ends with the family dead and the two teenagers knocking on the door of their next victim.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
The most recent and by far the most surprising example of films where the villains win in the end, Thanos spent the previous two and a half hours amassing the Infinity Stones in an attempt to wipe out half the universe. Going into the movie most of us weren’t expecting it to succeed, especially being a Marvel movie, and we certainly weren’t expecting a cliffhanger that we’d wait a year to resolve, but he succeeded and we waited.
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Se7en (1995)
A fantasy crime thriller surrounding a serial killer who murders his victims in a way said to be linked to the Seven Sins, from a victim force-fed spaghetti representing gluttony to a man handcuffed to a bed for a year, slowly starving to death. death, representing Sloth. Culminating in one of the most famous endings of a movie in years, it’s a good example of one of the films where the villains win in the end.
Life (2017)
A film set almost entirely in space, it follows a team of astronauts who have discovered evidence of extraterrestrial life and attempt to research/experiment on it. Things quickly go awry and the alien lifeform abducts the astronauts one by one, before an ominous twist at the end.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Considered one of the best movies with a twisted ending, The usual suspects will keep you on your toes throughout, as we listen to Kevin Spacey’s Verbal describing the events of a robbery and shooting. Too good to spoil, you’ll have to watch it if you want to know how the bad guy wins.
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Saw (2004)
Mainly taking place in a single damp and dirty bathroom, the story of the two chained inhabitants unfolds as they are shown to be more connected than previously thought. Struggling to remove their ties, it is eventually revealed that the key to their locks was with them at first, and the corpse in the middle of the room isn’t so dead.
Phone Booth (2002)
In the last entry on the list of movies where the villains win in the end, we have another movie that takes place mostly in the same location. As the title suggests, the whole movie centers around a man in a phone booth played by Colin Farrell, guarded there by a mysterious voice with a sniper, played by Kiefer Sutherland. Forcing Farrell’s character to reflect and admit his mistakes, to himself and his loved ones, the film ends with the thought that the sniper is dead and the threat is gone…until Sutherland shows up to gloat one last time in front of Farrell’s character, before leaving.
There you have it, seven movies where the bad guys win in the end. There are countless others, so which others would you have included?
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