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Justice didn’t win this time. These 10 movies left audiences stunned as the killer walked away free.
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00:00Though screenwriters might feel compelled to write a crowd-pleasing story for the sake of commercial appeal,
00:05sometimes there's just no getting away from the fact that an inconclusive or downright downbeat ending is the way to
00:13go.
00:13So, with that being said, I'm Jem from WhatCulture.com, and these are the movies where the killer never gets
00:20caught.
00:21Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
00:24Let's kick things off with an especially intriguing case now in the Oscar-winning drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
00:31Mildred Hayes, played by Frances McDormand, is a Missouri woman desperate to see the rapist and murderer of her teenage
00:38daughter brought to justice.
00:40Enough that she rents three roadside billboards in an attempt to agitate the local police into solving it.
00:46But alas, by film's end, Mildred isn't any closer to having closure for her daughter's death
00:52as the man she and Officer Dixon, played by Sam Rockwell, believed may have been responsible,
00:58wasn't a DNA match while also having a watertight alibi.
01:02However, Dixon did overhear the man in question boasting at a bar that he raped another young girl,
01:08prompting Mildred and Dixon to plot to locate and kill him.
01:12Whether they go through with their plan or not is left on an ambiguous note,
01:16but the central mystery pertaining to Mildred's daughter is devastatingly never solved,
01:22with the wider implication being that it probably never will.
01:25Zodiac.
01:26In the case of David Fincher's masterful thriller Zodiac,
01:30it was of course shackled to the reality of its true crime story,
01:34that the real Zodiac killer has never been caught to this very day.
01:38Fincher's tightly wound dramatization of Zodiac's rampage across 1960s Northern California
01:45shows the killer only in fleeting glimpses,
01:47refusing to commit to a concrete identity with multiple actors taken on the role throughout the film.
01:53As in real life, Fincher's Zodiac is never brought to justice,
01:57leaving as many as 37 victims to his name, if the killer's own claims can be believed.
02:03Even though Fincher's film theorizes that the killer may have been suspect Arthur Lee Allen,
02:08played by John Carl Lynch,
02:09he's never been categorically tied to Zodiac in a more than circumstantial way by the authorities
02:15and additionally passed away in 1992.
02:19In many respects, the movie's ending is satisfying precisely because it's unsatisfying,
02:25refusing to substitute the bleak truth for a sanitized Hollywood ending, Matchpoint.
02:30Woody Allen's Matchpoint boasts one of the most genuinely loathsome protagonists in cinema history,
02:37as retired tennis pro Chris, played by Jonathan Rhys Mayers,
02:41dates a young woman from a wealthy family,
02:43Chloe, played by Emily Mortimer,
02:45all-white conducting an affair with American woman Nola, played by Scarlett Johansson.
02:50Once Chris marries Chloe, Nola informs him that she's pregnant,
02:54and when he urges her to get an abortion, she refuses,
02:57instead trying to persuade him to divorce his wife.
03:00The net begins closing in on Chris as Chloe suspects he's cheating,
03:04at which point Chris takes a shotgun from his father-in-law and murders Nola,
03:09and by extension, their unborn child, while staging the crime scene as a robbery.
03:14All while Chris attempts to get his life back to normal with his now-pregnant wife,
03:18the police investigation starts centering around him.
03:21Furthermore, Chris carelessly disposes of a ring he took from the scene while staging the robbery,
03:27yet his thread is abruptly tied up when said ring is found on the body of a murdered local drug
03:32addict,
03:33prompting the police to clear Chris of killing Nola.
03:36Chloe consequently gives birth to a son, and Chris receives no punishment for his actions whatsoever.
03:42Basically, Chris was a grade-A sociopath who managed to win through pure dumb luck,
03:47when somebody else inadvertently took the fool for his crime by simply picking up a ring.
03:53The Pledge
03:53The Pledge is a majorly underappreciated psychological drama
03:58about an eminently retiring detective, Jerry Black,
04:01played by a stellar Jack Nicholson,
04:03who attempts to track down a child murderer.
04:05The movie has a uniquely brutal spin on the uncult killer motive,
04:09given that while they're never brought to justice,
04:12there's an extra nasty twist lying in wait.
04:15Believing he's ascertained the identity of the killer,
04:17referred to largely as a wizard,
04:20Jerry attempts to entrap him with a sting operation.
04:23But, in a cruel bout of irony,
04:25the wizard is burned to death in a fatal car accident on his way to said sting.
04:30After hours of waiting, the authorities eventually pack up the operation,
04:34leaving Jerry to his own devices,
04:36as he dejectedly believes that the killer is still at large,
04:39entirely unaware that the wizard died in a random accident.
04:43It's a brilliantly singular take on the intentionally unsatisfying ending,
04:48denying closure not to the audience,
04:50but to the main character,
04:52who is left to stew in his own boozed-up frustration.
04:55Phone Booth
04:56Phone Booth is a tight, dastardly little thriller
04:59from the late, great Joel Schumacher,
05:01about an arrogant New York publicist,
05:04Stu Shepard, played by Colin Farrell,
05:06who is taken hostage inside a phone booth by a caller,
05:09played by Keith Sutherland,
05:10who claims to have a sniper rifle aimed at his position.
05:14The caller proves he isn't lying when he guns down a pimp,
05:17played by John Enos III,
05:19harassing Stu,
05:21and makes mention of two other individuals he's killed,
05:24a German porn king and a corrupt executive.
05:26The sniper's fourth confirmed kill comes near the end of the movie,
05:30when he murders a pizza delivery man in his apartment,
05:33and leaves the man's body there in order to fake his own death.
05:37Just as Stu realises what's happened and is being treated in an ambulance,
05:41however, the sniper makes his first and only physical appearance in the film,
05:45speaking to a heavily medicated Stu,
05:47and warning him to stay honest or he'll stay back.
05:51The end.
05:52There's absolutely no indication that the caller is at any risk whatsoever of being caught,
05:57but rather that he'll go on and continue to use his special set of skills to terrorise elite liars.
06:03Lady Macbeth
06:04Lady Macbeth marked the breakthrough performance of Florence Pugh,
06:08who stars as Catherine,
06:10a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a man double her age,
06:14Alexander, played by Paul Hilton.
06:16Catherine subsequently embarks on an affair with one of the men who works on the property,
06:21Sebastian, played by Cosmo Jarvis,
06:23and when Alexander's father Boris, played by Christopher Fairbank,
06:27learns of the affair, she fatally poisons him.
06:29And this is just the beginning of the death and devastation Catherine leaves in her wake.
06:34After Catherine buries Boris and takes over the estate,
06:38Alexander finally returns home from a business trip,
06:41and a fight ensues in which Catherine kills him.
06:44Catherine and Sebastian bury Alexander, then kill his horse.
06:48And that has us soon complicated further when Catherine realises she's become pregnant by Sebastian,
06:54and Alexander's illegitimate son Teddy, played by Anton Palmer,
06:58is unexpectedly brought to the estate.
07:01Catherine and Sebastian ultimately decide to smother Teddy to death,
07:05and claim that he died in his sleep.
07:07But the guilt eventually gets to Sebastian,
07:10who confesses only for Catherine to refute this,
07:13and claim that Sebastian committed all of the killings with the estate's housemaid,
07:17Anna, played by Naomi Aki.
07:19The police believe Catherine, resulting in Sebastian,
07:22and the entirely innocent Anna being arrested and likely executed for the crimes that Catherine masterminded.
07:28So for anyone keeping score, Catherine has the deaths of three people,
07:32possibly two more in the future,
07:34and the demise of a horse on her hands.
07:371974's Black Christmas.
07:40Though card-carrying horror movies don't have much of a place on this list,
07:44given that the entire point of horror franchises is that the killer never gets permanently caught or killed,
07:501974's Black Christmas is a bit of an outlier,
07:53as it never got even a single sequel,
07:56just two rather naff remakes instead.
07:58The film follows a group of sorority sisters who are terrorised by a deranged killer during the Christmas season.
08:04And over the course of the movie,
08:07the murderer, Billy, played by Nick Mancuso,
08:09causes a total of seven deaths.
08:11The finale sees protagonist Jess, played by Olivia Hussey,
08:15beat the apparent killer, Peter, played by Keir DeLay, to death.
08:19But after the police attend to the scene and surmise that Peter was behind all the killings,
08:24Billy's voice is heard and a shadow can be seen leaving the attic,
08:28making it clear that the real killer got away with it.
08:30Black Christmas stands as the rarest of successful horror films never to get a sequel,
08:35despite categorically implying the killer's survival at the end.
08:39We got two remakes instead, with the 2006 version making the predictable decision to kill him off this time,
08:45American Beauty.
08:47American Beauty opens with Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey's voiceover,
08:51flatly telling the audience that he'll be dead a year from now.
08:55And dully, the film ends with him being shot in the head by his neighbour,
08:59Colonel Frank Fitz, played by Chris Cooper,
09:01after Lester rejects his romantic advances.
09:03Even though Fitz appears to be in a deeply emotional state when he finally confronts his own repressed homosexuality
09:10and is rebuffed by Lester,
09:12he nevertheless takes appropriate care to ensure he likely isn't pinned for the murder.
09:18First and foremost, we see Frank wearing surgical gloves,
09:21ensuring he won't leave any incriminating fingerprints at the scene.
09:25And given his generally exacting demeanour throughout the film,
09:29it's easy to believe he'll take all necessary precautions to avoid being accused.
09:34Plus, there are several other decidedly more probable suspects in his midst.
09:39Most of all, Lester's wife Carolyn, played by Annette Bening,
09:42who actually plotted to do it herself before Fitz beat her to it.
09:45In fact, in an ironic twist, the movie's original ending saw Lester's daughter Jane,
09:51played by Thora Birch, and her boyfriend Ricky, played by Wes Bentley,
09:54who is also Frank's son, put on trial for the crime instead,
09:59with director Sam Mendes allegedly shooting both guilty and not guilty outcomes,
10:04neither of which were ultimately used.
10:06Memories of Murder
10:08Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder is based on true events
10:12and revolves around a detective, Park Dooman, played by Song Kang-ho,
10:16who investigates a spree of murders in 1980s South Korea.
10:20By film's end, at which point it skips forward almost 20 years to 2003,
10:25the year of the film's release, the culprit is still at large as in real life,
10:29and Park is clearly haunted by his inability to solve the case.
10:33In the chilling final scene, he returns to where the killer's first victim was discovered
10:38and meets a young girl who may have interacted with them.
10:42Describing the possible killer as plain and ordinary.
10:46Park then stares directly at the audience,
10:48implying that we, or someone watching the film with us, could be the murderer.
10:53Much like Zodiac, the film was beholden to the facts brought to light when it was being made.
10:58Though in 2019, the killer, Lee Chun-jae, was finally caught,
11:02even if it was evidently over 15 years too late for the movie itself to have a neat and tidy
11:08ending.
11:09Scary Movie
11:10Because not every movie on this list needs to be a totally serious thriller,
11:15and the usual suspects have been talked to death,
11:18basically, here's a rare case of a spoof that offers its own genuinely brilliant killer getaway.
11:24The original scary movie, for all of its silliness, concludes with a genuinely brilliant and hilariously unexpected
11:31usual suspects parodying twist, where the Ghostface-esque killer is revealed to be none other than Buffy,
11:38played by Shannon Elizabeth's intellectually disabled brother, Doofy, played by Dave Sheridan.
11:43Moreover, in a plot point that admittedly falls apart under much scrutiny,
11:48It is a spoof, after all, Doofy has apparently been faking his disability and unkempt appearance the entire time,
11:56revealing himself to be a suave, handsome man who is romantically involved with reporter Gal Hellstorm,
12:02played by Sharia Terry.
12:03Even though Cindy, played by Anna Faris, figures out that Doofy is the killer in the movie's final moments,
12:09as with the usual suspects, he drives off into the night moments before she heads outside to search for him.
12:16And given that the scary movie franchise has never returned to the Doofy character,
12:20there's no reason not to believe that he got away totally scot-free.
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