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Explore a chilling collection of horror movie antagonists whose motives were surprisingly understandable, even righteous. Sometimes, the 'bad guys' are just fighting for what's right in the most extreme ways.
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00:00In the overwhelming majority of horror movies there's little debate over who the good and
00:04bad characters are because the lines tend to be drawn incredibly clearly. There are the hapless
00:08victims desperately fighting to survive and then there's the thing trying to kill them. But not
00:11all horror movies are created equal and sometimes filmmakers prefer to make things a little more
00:16soupy and ambiguous to the extent that when we take a step back and really think about it the
00:20supposed villain might actually be basically in the right. I'm Sean Farrick for WhatCultureHorror
00:25and here is our list of horror movie villains who were totally right. Johnny In A Violent Nature
00:30Much like his obvious inspiration Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees there's an innately sympathetic
00:35quality to In A Violent Nature's Johnny considering all the guy wants to do is left alone to rest.
00:41Johnny's tragic backstory is that he was a developmentally delayed boy who fell to his
00:45death during a prank gone wrong and when his father confronted one of the individuals responsible he
00:49too was killed with both deaths being subsequently covered up and though Johnny returns as a vengeful
00:54undead revenant the key to keeping him napping in the dirt is to leave his prized locket which was
00:59given to him by his mother hanging on the remains of the fire tower where he died. The film literally
01:04begins with the central characters picking up the locket triggering Johnny's awakening and subsequent
01:09rampage. Now did those kids deserve to get brutally turned apart? Not really, as they were to know that
01:14taking some random locket would rouse Johnny from eternal slumber but at the same time maybe don't take
01:19things that aren't yours. Johnny just wanted to keep his stuff and rest easy, not be bothered by young'uns
01:24messing with his wares. Alpha, Slotherhouse. Just look at this adorable little critter, how could she
01:30ever be possibly wrong? We're talking of course about Alpha, the killer sloth villain from 2023's
01:36brilliantly monikered comedy horror Slotherhouse. At the start of the film Alpha is minding her own
01:41business just slothing around in the jungles of South America when she's kidnapped by a poacher and
01:45sold to a college student named Emily who wishes to use Alpha to boost her popularity. While Emily is more
01:51naive than ill-intentioned she's still paying into a system that's built on ripping animals away from
01:56their homes and abusing them. More to the point Alpha's subsequent rampage across Emily's sorority
02:01is entirely on brand for a wild animal being forcibly removed from its habitat and subjected to the vapid
02:06banality of humanity. That's why generally speaking we don't do that. Alpha did nothing wrong, acting purely
02:13on instinct as animals are wont to do, ensuring her demise at the end was genuinely tragic.
02:17Alex Hammond prom night. We eventually learn that the masked killer in 1980s prom night is Alex Hammond
02:25who has been seeking bloody revenge against the group of kids who tormented his sister Robin and
02:29caused her accidental death six years prior. Alex secretly witnessed the incident and then decided
02:34to kill the four people responsible which is a pretty clean motive as slasher movies go. While there
02:38is admittedly a little human collateral damage in the middle of Alex's vengeance quest for the most part
02:44he keeps his blade aimed directly at the four who caused his sister's demise and then swiftly covered
02:49it up and to complete Alex's tragic arc throughout the film he's ultimately killed by his other sister
02:54Kim who fatally strikes him in the head with an axe before learning his identity. An eye for an eye
02:59may
02:59make the whole world blind and murder isn't good but considering the uniquely cruel means of his sister's
03:05untimely death it's easy to understand Alex's thought process here. The Ghosts Poltergeist
03:10The central antagonist in Toby Hooper's Poltergeist are the seemingly malevolent ghosts who terrorize
03:16the Freeling family in their home in the middle of the Cuesta Verde housing development but the fact of
03:21the matter is that Cuesta Verde is eventually revealed to have been built on a former cemetery with
03:25the graves apparently being moved to a new location. In reality only the grave stones were relocated, meaning
03:31that these houses were all built on top of abandoned graves with most of the spirits simply being
03:36confused entities desperately trying to cross over to the other side. There's really only one malevolent
03:41spirit among them referred to as the Beast which is more overly tormenting the Freelings and tries to
03:46stop its fellow ghosts from crossing over and as for the rest they're just befuddled entities
03:50desperately trying to go their own way and any fear or distress they cause the human family is by pure
03:55accident. Kierat Slacks Slacks is a deeply silly film with a genuine message behind it revolving around a
04:01possessed pair of jeans that embarks on a riotously murderous rampage. Near the end of the film it's
04:05revealed that the killer jeans are actually possessed by the angry spirit of Kierat, a 13 year old Indian
04:11child labourer who was killed by a thresher while picking cotton used to make the designer jeans known
04:16as super shapers and so the possessed jeans go about killing everyone even tangentially linked to the
04:21product line and its company Canadian Cotton Clothiers. Cashiers, customers and vapid influencers are all
04:27mercilessly offed, speaking to the notion that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism because
04:32all of these people are complicit in supporting a system designed to exploit the poorest in society.
04:37It's all the more satisfying to watch given that Canadian Cotton Clothiers markets itself as an
04:42organic ethical brand when the truth is anything but. They freely use sweatshops and GMOs to make their
04:47products cheaply. Slacks's commentary on greenwashing and fast fashion may not be subtle but it sure is fun to
04:53watch the gory mayhem unfold. The intruders knock at the cabin. M Night Shyamalan's knock at the cabin
04:59revolves around a family who are terrorized by a group of four strangers at their remote cabin
05:03getaway who inform them that they must sacrifice a member of their family in order to prevent an
05:08impending apocalypse that will wipe out humanity. As the tense hostage situation drags on we see more
05:13and more suggestions that the end of the world is indeed looming though of course we can't ever be sure
05:18that this isn't a giant hoax on the part of the quartet, this being a Shyamalan film and all.
05:22Ultimately one of the family Eric becomes convinced that the intruders are correct believing them to
05:27represent the four horsemen of the apocalypse and so willingly allows himself to be shot by his husband
05:31Andrew. At this moment it's confirmed beyond any doubt that the intruders were telling the truth and
05:36that a series of calamities did indeed take place but were stopped the moment that Eric laid down his life.
05:41That is to say the four antagonists were absolutely 100% in the right, forcing someone to die for the
05:47sake of the
05:47wider human race was a utilitarian move rather than an act of evil, as horrifying as it still was.
05:52Marty Ranson Slaughter High Slaughter High is a 1980s slasher film revolving around a group of adults
05:58who were invited to a high school reunion only to find themselves pursued by a masked killer. The
06:02robe is that said killer is Marty Ranson, the outcast the adults bullied at school a decade prior.
06:07And this isn't just a case of someone refusing to let go of the past, no these kids straight up
06:10abused
06:11Marty from cruelly pranking him in order to mock his naked body to physically attacking him,
06:15poisoning him with laced drugs and finally causing his face to be disfigured with nitric acid.
06:20Marty is physically and emotionally hollowed out then so it's rather easy to sympathize with his
06:25revenge plan. Even accepting that murder is definitely wrong, these people ruined Marty's
06:29life and swiftly moved on with their own. What the kids subjected Marty to wasn't mere garden variety
06:34schoolyard bullying and if you mess with the bull you should expect to get the horns. Did Marty go overboard?
06:39Yes. But were the targets of his ire complete human garbage? Also yes. Grace, The Lodge.
06:452019's The Lodge immediately makes the audience distrustful of Grace given that her relationship
06:50with Richard is implied to be behind the suicide of Richard's estranged wife Laura. Furthermore we
06:55swiftly learn that Grace has a traumatic past, having been raised in a cult and ultimately being the sole
06:59survivor of the cult's mass suicide. She's perfectly teed up to be the villain then who will antagonize
07:04Richard's children Aiden and Mia when they end up snowed in at a lodge together over Christmas.
07:09Grace's mental state spirals throughout the film though it's eventually revealed that Aiden and Mia
07:14have actually been gaslighting her the entire time, drugging her, hiding her medication and faking
07:19strange sights and sounds around the lodge to impact her sanity. The siblings only realize too late the
07:24gravity of what they've done as without her medication Grace becomes convinced they're all now in
07:28purgatory. This prompts her to kill Richard with the ending implying she will also kill the kids and then
07:33herself. This is a classic case of f around and find out Grace didn't ask to be raised in a
07:38death cult nor
07:39psychologically abused by her fiance's sociopathic children and those kids ended up paying the price for their actions.
07:45Pumpkinhead. Pumpkinhead. Pumpkinhead revolves around Ed Harley, a man who loses his young son in a dirt bike accident
07:51caused by a group of reckless teenagers who then decide to cover the crime up. An incensed grieving Ed then
07:57visits
07:57a witch Haggis who promises vengeance but only at a steep price as she helps him resurrect the demonic entity
08:03known as
08:03Pumpkinhead. Now to be clear Pumpkinhead is a monstrous basically unstoppable killing machine no question. It's not really
08:08malicious in the traditional sense. It was merely summoned and asked to kill the teens by Ed and it largely
08:13fulfilled that request.
08:14Ultimately Pumpkinhead is really just a mirror to humanity's own ugliness quite literally given that Pumpkinhead's appearance later becomes more
08:21human while Ed's becomes more
08:22monstrous. The two are now tied together. The creature is basically just a tool that's conjured to do a job
08:27rather than an entity with its own agency. And so it's honestly tough to throw much judgment its way.
08:34Pumpkinhead's gone.
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