- 6 minutes ago
These movies feature menacing figures, high-stakes conflict, and intense drama, yet they're missing one key ingredient: a villain. Discover ten fascinating films that prove you don't need a bad guy for a compelling narrative.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00So if there's one thing that makes the plot of most movies chug along, it is the villain,
00:05the bad guy, the antagonist, the arch-nemesis. And every narrative feature has one. Or does it?
00:12These films certainly feel like they ought to have a villain, and we darned well remember
00:17there being someone behind all the hurdles our heroes had to jump. But if we take another look,
00:22well, things aren't as good versus evil as they seem. I'm Gareth, this is What Culture,
00:27and here are movies that ought to have a villain, but don't.
00:30Funny Pages Young Man vs. Society is given a grimy twist
00:35in Funny Pages, where teenager and aspiring comic artist Robert Blythner finds himself
00:41rebelling against the small world of New Jersey. A twisted coming-of-age story,
00:47the film doesn't feature a single likeable or forgivable character, except for Robert's
00:52art teacher Mr. Catano, who dies suddenly in the opening scene. Perhaps then,
00:57this is the cipher for the entire movie, as good characters don't have a place in a world that
01:03is unfriendly, unforgiving, and surprisingly real at the same time. Robert abandons his family home
01:09and finds himself a dank basement apartment in one of New Jersey's roughest areas, sharing with two
01:15older men who live in filth and know no boundaries in terms of normality or sexuality, while he
01:21simultaneously enters the orbit of a whole cavalcade of weirdos, no-hopers, and casually sinister
01:27characters. But despite the fact that so many of these characters definitely have the makings of
01:33an antagonist, nobody really commits to the bit. Robert comes out the other side of the film as much
01:38the brat as he went in, and though he is a product of his society, the only person to blame
01:43for his
01:43behavior is, well, himself. No outright villains anywhere, though. Knock at the Cabin
01:48Knock at the Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan's return to form brings four seemingly suicidal strangers
01:55into a gay couple's holiday home, armed with homemade weapons and apparently representing the
02:00four horsemen of the apocalypse. Yet despite their sinister bearing, and the fact that they
02:05physically compel the family to stay put, the four strangers profess to have no intention of causing
02:11their captives harm. Yeah, right, right? Well, turns out they're actually telling the truth,
02:16as over the course of 100 nail-biting minutes, the only persons the horsemen harm are themselves,
02:23ritualistically sacrificing their troop as the clocks count down to an impending apocalypse.
02:27They posit that, if the family sacrifice one of their own, the end of the world will be avoided.
02:32No pressure. While we would expect to take this line with 10 pinches of salt, it is borne out in
02:38the film's conclusion, when the sacrifice of dedicated co-dad Eric by his loving partner Andrew
02:44does indeed put a stopper in an Armageddon that has planes falling from the sky and mega tsunamis
02:51chomping off great chunks of coastline. The four horsemen are the good guys, and the sweet family
02:57are the good guys, and God or whoever sent the horsemen their visions is probably a good guy,
03:02so blame the weather, I guess. Cocoon. Not all films about aliens living among us have to be
03:09body snatchers, or they live. Sometimes they can just be a band of good'uns willing to share their
03:14immortality with the local old folk. Indeed, although Cocoon has been lost among its harder-edged
03:20contemporaries, the Ron Howard-directed feature won several Academy Awards in its time, and features a
03:26surprisingly uplifting portrayal of our outer space visitors compared to many of its stablemates.
03:31The film sees the residents of a Florida nursing home uncover a fountain of youth in their backyard,
03:37which allows them to not just mend their aching bones, but relive some of their glory days.
03:43Sounds like a blast. No surprises that the supposed fountain is the result of alien intervention,
03:48then. Little do the old folks know, extraterrestrials known as Anterians have been using the swimming
03:54pool next door to store their cocoons, and their effluent has been providing everyone that rosy boost.
04:00Despite this impending collision course being fertile ground for an interplanetary war,
04:05the old folks wind up making a pact with the Anterians to travel with them back to,
04:09you guessed it, Anteria, and live forever in peace.
04:13American Fiction
04:14Called Jefferson's directorial debut, American Fiction, has its flaws, not least a weird Wizard
04:21of Oz-like ending in which the main conflicts don't so much get resolved as swept off the narrative
04:26plane in one fell swoop. Nonetheless, it is a scathing satire against the contemporary literary
04:32scene, which prizes identity far above the writing itself. Tenured professor and published
04:37literary author Monk struggles against a world which only wants to see his blackness on the page,
04:43and despite being up against a slurry of white folks who fetishize the color of his skin and
04:48their misconceptions of what his genuine experience may be, none of them qualify as an authentic villain.
04:54Bearing in mind, this is a film that begins when its protagonist embarks on a tour de fraudulence
04:59under the guise of an ex-gangbanger on the run from the law, and ends when the FBI bust into
05:04an
05:04awards ceremony, guns blazing. There really ought to be a clear antagonist here, but there just isn't.
05:09What there is, is an entire establishment shored up in office blocks around the globe,
05:14and hell-bent on raking in cash from poverty porn. And you can't exactly throw that down a Death
05:19Starship, can ya? Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. The precise intersection between West Coast
05:24Millennial and Gen Z culture. Alina Reigns' influencer horror Bodies, Bodies, Bodies takes
05:30some major faces from the social media generation, Rachel Sennett and Pete Davidson included,
05:36and turns them loose on a Mansion in the Woods movie that redefines its genre and tropes.
05:42The premise is familiar enough. A group of 20-somethings hole up in a remote building,
05:46cut off from mainstream society by great distances, bad weather, and lack of cellular reception.
05:52Then when a hide-and-seek-style party game has one of their group turn up dead, the fake friends
05:58turn on each other while trying to save themselves from whoever done it. As the Bodies, Bodies,
06:02Bodies pile high, high, high, and the guest numbers whittle down, it seems impossible that one of them
06:08is not the killer pulling the strings. Well, spoiler alert, the big twist of Bodies is that there is no
06:13villain at all. The entire film is just a bunch of privileged loudmouths arguing themselves to
06:18death, stumbling into mishap after mishap with unintentionally fatal consequences.
06:23But who could have seen that come in? AI Artificial Intelligence
06:26Few films feel as dark or hopeless as Steven Spielberg's AI Artificial Intelligence.
06:33In the film, we follow android boy child David on his harrowing and unrelenting journey from the
06:39cradle to the grave. Across thousands of years, he encounters the worst of humanity along the way,
06:45who want to exploit him and harm him and can't find it in themselves to love him the way he
06:50does
06:51them. Breaks your damn heart. He journeys past the end of humanity and the end of the earth as we
06:56know
06:56it, into the time of advanced AI lifeforms, looking and hoping for the happy ending he deserves.
07:03But in the face of all the cruelties and injustices David witnesses, and which we must witness being
07:09thrust upon him, there is no overarching schemer, no malicious villain pulling the strings. We might
07:15want to blame his creator Professor Hobby, but he's just a man. An inventor trying to bring the next line
07:21of his product to life, so to speak. No, there's just no bad guy here, is there? In the end,
07:25there are
07:25only humans and their emotional, financial and existential avarice.
07:29The Banshees of Inner Sheeran Another master collaboration between writer-director
07:34Martin McDonagh and his stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, tragicomedy The Banshees
07:39of Inner Sheeran dramatises the follies of the Irish civil conflicts in microcosm. On the remote
07:45island of Inner Sheeran, literally translated as the Island of Ireland, Podrick hits the pub one day
07:50to find his best friend Colm has abruptly put an end to their lifelong friendship, and wants nothing
07:55more to do with him. The film charts Podrick's misbegotten attempts to repair this friendship,
08:00which gradually grows to enmity with each of his bungled attempts, resulting in a dead pet for
08:06Podrick, self-amputated fingers for Colm, and a previously peaceful island community in turmoil.
08:12Yeah, despite the severity of this enmity, Colm never becomes a villain. He is stubborn,
08:18hard-headed, and resolved not to change his mind no matter what his ex-friend does, but always taxed to
08:23the part of misunderstood co-protagonist. The absence of a genuine villain, a person unto whom
08:29we can attribute our feelings of hurt and blame, is felt all the more potently in a film that has
08:34multi-digit amputations, donkey manslaughter, and a young man's suicide. Enter the Void
08:40With Enter the Void, Gaspar Noé guides us on a DMT trip to the other side, when drug dealer Oscar
08:48is
08:48shot in the head in the first act, and his soul takes a wild ride through past and present.
08:54This begins a twisty, personal narrative offset against a backdrop of psychedelic visuals that
09:00dip in and out throughout, channelling, modernising, and redefining the iconic Stargate sequence from
09:06the director's favourite movie, 2001 A Space Odyssey, paying homage while doing something postmodern and new.
09:13Tokyo itself provides fertile imagery for the film's visual eccentricities, the neon and claustrophobia
09:19of the metropolis shaping Oscar's physical and post-physical journeys, and offering some pretty
09:25grimy and miserable corners in which to unfold a tragic narrative. Botched deals, drug rings, abortions,
09:33and car crashes, there is not much Noé won't throw at us. But while the director's irreversible and
09:39climax have several bad actors at their core, pushing the drama along against their protagonist's
09:45wills, Enter the Void lacks that evil figure to coalesce around. Like the Greek tragedies,
09:50the miseries throughout Oscar and his sister Linda's lives are mostly the product of luck,
09:55chance, fate, and their own character flaws. But all's well that ends well, eh? And Enter the Void
10:01definitely concludes with a happy ending. Corner Office
10:04A recent movie that has neither had the love nor exposure it definitely deserves,
10:10Joachim Back's Corner Office remains something of a hidden gem for those of us who still enjoy
10:15white collar malaise. Our story is a chapter in the life of pencil pusher Orson, beginning with
10:20the commencement of his latest job in a thoroughly grey office, and ending with his firing. After a
10:26slow burn in and a few misunderstandings between himself and his co-workers, Orson discovers a lush,
10:32spacious, and private office with 1970s decor, and all the mod cons any self-respecting office worker
10:39could ever need. This becomes Orson's go-to place to escape his colleagues and get some serious work
10:46done. The dream. There's only one problem. The office is not an office, but a mental state produced
10:51by a mind fractured on years of tedium. And when Orson goes there, he's actually just standing
10:57catonic in the corridor staring at the wall. A truly kafkan absurdist drama, the enemy of corner
11:03office is not any one person, but the limits and constraints of bureaucracy and society.
11:08And despite doing everything that they can to keep Orson from his happy place corner office,
11:13his colleagues are just run of the mill office workers, trying to get on with their day without
11:17having to deal with whatever strangeness the big guy brings to the mix. Bo is afraid.
11:21After the one-two punch of hereditary and Midsommar, the last thing anyone expected director Ari Aster
11:28to do was put together a modern-day tragicommie horror retelling of Homer's Greek epic poem The
11:33Odyssey. Eponymous protagonist Bo has every reason to be afraid. Living in the most hostile world of all,
11:40in which his neighbours blame him for noise that he didn't make, suburbanites blame him for how bad
11:45they messed up their own child, his mother blames him for not loving her enough, and society seems to
11:50blame him merely for being alive. He suffers physically, mentally, and emotional from the
11:56film's first scene to its last. But who does he have to blame for it all? Bo's journey is bloody,
12:01gory, grim, and difficult to watch, and yet lacks a clear and discernible villain. While the Odyssey
12:07has Poseidon as its arch-antagonist, pulling the strings of fate in an attempt to waylay Odysseus on
12:13his journey home, Bo is afraid exists in a world without gods and existential meaning-makers.
12:18Thus, there is no architect of Bo's trials or destiny. He has been adrift most of his life,
12:24from family, friends, community, society. And these are merely the closing days of a fated,
12:30yet inconsequential life.
12:32And now I'll try to pick up his new opinion on which I'll try.
12:32And it's that fastback on the occult behind me.
12:32Therefore it can only act on a liby kontement.
Comments