- 7 weeks ago
Sometimes the bad guy isn't Dracula, Jigsaw or Psycho Goreman - but maybe it ought to be!
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00:00Sometimes you think you've got the movie paid, you can see who the villain is because look at them
00:04twirling their moustache with their top hat and cane. Oh, the evil of it up, oh wait it wasn't
00:09them at all. Huh, well, this is a list about that. I'm Sean Ferrick for WhatCultureHorror
00:13and here are 10 horror movies that switch villains. Number 10, The Platform. The rich
00:18elite are set up as the antagonists of Galdr, Gatsulu, Orusha's class-conscious Spanish thriller
00:23The Platform in which people are trapped inside a vertical prison through which a smorgasbord of
00:28food descends, serving each level until those at the bottom are left with nothing, and yet they
00:32wind up playing second fiddle to that most classic of all evils, human nature. Political commentary aside,
00:37the people who make the food and run the building are never seen, and in fact many of the prisoners
00:41trapped inside the structure have chosen to be there in exchange for something they need,
00:45in protagonist Goreng's Ivan Massang case, a university diploma. As such it is these very
00:51prisoners who end up being the worst part of the whole experience, terrorising and cannibalising
00:56and assaulting each other, making no effort to unify against their supposed oppressors,
01:00but actively creating an unlivable situation for so many. Big Brother may be watching, but in terms
01:05of actual unexpected villainy, it spends the film on the sidelines. Number 9, Halloween Ends.
01:10David Gordon Green worked wonders with his Halloween Revival trilogy, dragging the film series
01:15back out of the muck that it spent so many years languishing in and making it appealing and relevant
01:20for contemporary audiences in search of an old fashioned scare. As with the first two entries,
01:23Michael Myers was supposed to be the headline villain for the final part of the trilogy.
01:27Halloween ends and yet he winds up taking a back seat for most of the film. The shape gives way to
01:32young impersonator and all round upstart Corey Cunningham, a brand new villain who has been
01:36infected with the same evil and harbours lofty aspirations of taking Michael's mantle. Corey goes
01:41so far as to literally wrest the iconic Shatner mask from Michael's hands and wear it for a bloody
01:47but ultimately short-lived rampage in the film's third act. Michael returns at the very end of the movie,
01:52just in time for his own death, but it is very much Corey's film whether fans liked it or not.
01:56Number 8, Heathers. Veronica Sawyer is just your average downtrodden 80s movie high schooler
02:02until she becomes a member of the uber popular, obnoxiously exclusive clique known as the Heathers.
02:07While her name alone should exclude Veronica from membership, she nevertheless becomes part of the
02:11group, only to pine for her days of relative anonymity. Enter JD, a bad boy with the power to
02:17extract Veronica from the clique and exact revenge for all of their spiteful misdeeds. Although the
02:22bulk of the teen comedy horror's plot centres around Veronica getting revenge on the titular
02:26Heathers, JD winds up being the true villain of the piece. Wielding a gun, faking suicides,
02:31and just generally taking things way too far, JD ends his reign as Westerberg High's trenchcoat in
02:36residence by blowing himself up with an IED intended for the entire school. Sure, JD's heart was
02:42somewhat in the right place, but his head was somewhere totally else, and no matter what the
02:48everyday villainous Heathers did pales in comparison to his plans to put school out forever.
02:53Number 7, The Babysitter, Killer Queen. McG's original black comedy slasher The Babysitter,
02:58about, you guessed it, a babysitter with sacrificial plans for her young charge,
03:02wasn't really the event it could have been, neither reinventing nor redefining any of the tropes it
03:07leaned on. All of this changed with the arrival of sequel Killer Queen two years later, which broke
03:12out into the wider world while taking everything good about the first film and turning it up to 11.
03:16Two years after his babysitter, B, played by Tamara Weaving, and her satanic cult tried to kill him,
03:22Cole Johnson is still suffering the reprisals of that fateful night, with everyone, parents of the
03:27Five-O included, believing he had a psychotic break. But that doesn't stop B's gang from coming
03:32after him again in order to bring her back from the dead. Although the plot revolves around the
03:36performing of a ritual and resurrection of the first movie's main villain, when she finally arrives,
03:40she's had a change of heart. Thus, B helps Cole defeat her old friends and Cole's ex-best friend,
03:45the true villains of the film, before sacrificing herself for the greater good. Awww.
03:50Number 6, Prometheus. Pivoting wildly from an initial position of having nothing to do with
03:55the iconic alien brand, the first film in Ridley Scott's new Alien trilogy promised an array of
04:01pre-xenomorph creatures, viruses and horrors with the Weyland-Yutani corporation lurking in the background.
04:06Set in the dying days of the 21st century, Prometheus follows the crew of the titular
04:10spaceship as they seek out the world of an ancient humanoid alien visitor seen across all of Earth's
04:16ancient cultures. When they arrive, however, the place isn't in the best of shape, with no apparent
04:21lifeforms or, for that matter, superior beings. That is, until someone pokes the proverbial hive and all
04:26manner of goo and creepies and crawlies and horrors is unleashed. And yet, when it comes down to it,
04:31the aliens and viruses are not the central evil of the film, and for once it's not Weyland-Yutani
04:37either. It turns out the goo and the creepies and crawlies etc are merely a tool of the godlike
04:42engineers who intend to use them to destroy their own creations, us, and boy do they try.
04:48Number 5, 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic horror is a tough watch for a multitude
04:54of reasons, bringing zombies home in a whole new way. Jim, Cillian Murphy, wakes up in a London ravaged
05:00by a so-called rage virus that has turned people into murderous, super angry, super fast, super
05:05infectious creatures, the like of which these lands have never seen outside of parliament. It doesn't
05:09really get much scarier than manic rage zombies, until it does. Though the zombie-creating virus looms
05:15large over the entire film, and provides a heap of scares and intense moments, the evil of men
05:20eclipses it all. With zombies as the backdrop, Christopher Eccleston's Major Henry West, the leader of a group of
05:25renegade soldiers in Manchester, enacts his own campaign of cruelty and evil. Hulled up in a
05:30fortified mansion that at first appears to be a much needed sanctuary from the madness outside,
05:35it soon becomes apparent that the Major intends to lure some surviving females into sexual slavery
05:40in order to repopulate the world, all while giving his men their kips. Frankly, we'd take a zombie world
05:46over that one any day. Number 4, Psycho Goreman. Future cult treasure Psycho Goreman offers everything you
05:52could want and more from a brutal killer alien feature. It's got a psychotic warlord, Power
05:56Ranger style fights and a sociopathic little girl, Mimi, played by Nita Josie Hanna, who makes the
06:02esteemed galactic conqueror Mr Goreman, played by Matthew Nineber, her flunky. And yet the appropriately
06:07titled Psycho doesn't end up being the film's primary antagonist. Sure he claims that when free he will
06:13annihilate Mimi and everything she has ever loved, but there's not a whole lot of follow through. On the other
06:17end of things there is an intergalactic guardian named Pandora who while theoretically on the side of
06:22good and tasked with hunting down Goreman before he can do any more damage is also the very being
06:26who enslaved the warlord's people in the first place. Far be it for me to say how a film that
06:31sees a world destroying space demon come under the control of a preteen girl is supposed to play out,
06:35but despite the big guy's near constant threats of pain, death and doom, he winds up helping his captors
06:40defeat the far more entitled and downright irritating Pandora. Number 3, Let the Right One In. On the face of it all,
06:47Thomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In looks like a classic vampire flick, featuring a creature of
06:52the night stalking a small community set against the pervasive darkness of a Stockholm winter,
06:57but while the sinister and mysterious child vampire Ellie is set up as the film's antagonist,
07:02both in the film's first act and its promotional material, it's a little bit more complicated than
07:06that. As it turned out, 12 year old protagonist Oscar has more trouble from his bullies than his
07:10friendly neighborhood creature. Beset by misery and the quiet dark desires that follow from his suffering,
07:15Oscar spends his time alone, collecting newspaper clippings about murders and fantasizing of the
07:20revenge he's incapable of exacting. It is when he is on his edge, driven out from all places the
07:24young boy belongs, that he encounters Ellie. While this could have been a morose tale of tragedy,
07:29in which Oscar is slain and becomes a vampire himself, the film instead pivots toward a narrative
07:34of friendship, romance and shared trauma. Oscar forms a close bond with Ellie, recognizing an affinity
07:39in her otherness, and she winds up saving his life from the film's real antagonist, the bullies.
07:44Sure she also grants him bloody vengeance, but what's a bit of child killing amongst friends?
07:48Number 2, Renfield. Chris McKay's Renfield takes a whole different angle on the classic
07:53Dracula lackey. Positioning the long, long suffering servant, played here by Nicholas Holt,
07:58squarely in the 21st century and in therapy, the film finds him at a critical juncture in his life,
08:03reckoning with his enthrallment to his overbearing and eccentric master, Nicholas Cage in all of his
08:08camp flamboyant glory. Although Cage's Dracula was all over the posters and trailers and promotional
08:13material menacing a reluctant Renfield and his new friend, Awkwafina's NOPD traffic officer Rebecca,
08:18the Prince of Darkness ends up taking on the role of something more like the jilted lover.
08:22The real villains of the piece are Ben Schwartz's junior gangster Tedward Lobo and his mother,
08:27Mafia crime boss Bella Francesca, Shereya Dashiell. As the film's big bads the pair are more slapstick
08:33than sinister, but they allow Dracula the space to stalk the shadows, flourishing in hilarious little
08:38tableaus before swooping in at the last minute to both ruin and save the day.
08:42Number 1. Saw X.
08:44When fans heard that the Saw series was being resurrected once again for the 2020s there was
08:49only one question on everyone's mind. Which of Jigsaw's secret acolytes was going to be the villain?
08:53The first wave of traitors and promotional material however had us eating our words because X did the
08:58unthinkable, bringing back Tobin Bell's Jigsaw. With a whole host of new traps and nasty surprises,
09:03including an eyeball vacuum that becomes the focal point for the whole marketing campaign,
09:07most of us assumed that the prequel would have the master engineer serial killer back in sinister
09:12form, laying the hurt on a whole new array of vaguely immoral victims. Not so. While the film
09:17has Jigsaw front and centre, conceiving of some of his most creative traps and orchestrating some
09:22truly brutal bloodshed, he plays a surprisingly emotive second fiddle to this film's secret main villain,
09:28the manipulative doctor Cecilia Pedersen. Running a fake cancer centre, Pedersen cons the most vulnerable
09:35out of their cash before leaving them to die from their debilitating illness. While she puts on
09:39something of a sincere face for most of the film, subtly undermining her colleagues in crime,
09:44her villainy comes out full force in the final act as, among other things, she locks Jigsaw and a small
09:50child into a blood waterboarding trap. Yuck.
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