Excluding the Horror genre and individual movies in a series, what movie story ends with evil winning?
Excluding the Horror genre and individual movies in a series, what movie story ends with evil winning?
Fallen. Denzel sets a very neat trap for the demon... but not neat enough.
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog as well. While the Doc may have been mostly noble and Hammer mostly awful, it ends (somewhat ambiguously) with the Doc actually turning into a villain.
Fallen was the one I was going to add. Glad to see it here!
I guess my mind automatically excluded it because of the demon aspect being somewhat horror related (though it's a completely mild movie in terms of graphic violence) but it definitely deserves to be on this list. Partner watched it for the first time few months back and loved it (they hate horror and generally prefer family genre), just a generally great movie that keeps you intrigued and was a great change from stream-binging style entertainment.
I'm still disappointed we never got the Dr. Horrible sequel...
The Usual Suspects is the first one that comes to mind that isn't horror and the villain winning by getting away. Does that fit the 'evil wins' concept you are looking for?
In The Company Of Men
Devil's Advocate
Interview With The Vampire
Se7en
Nightcrawler
American Psycho
Arguably No Country For Old Men
A lot of documentaries e.g: Paradise Lost.
Devil’s Advocate
I'd say evil loses quite definitively in that one - although the final minute or so makes it clear the contest of wills isn't over.
The reason why I think it wins is it becomes obvious Satan can have do-overs and he's already falling for one of them. He hasn't actually escaped, and Satan is still having fun at his expense.
Pretty much any Batman movie. It's subtle, because it's not chaotic evil, but lawful evil—the status quo, established hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that plague the city remain in place. In fact, enforcing and protecting status quo is the whole raison d'entre of Batman, who is an extremely priviledged rich individual benefitting and profiting from the status quo. And thus has no desire to enact real societal change, unlike eg Baine.
I'd argue James Bond is also the same. Yes, Bond villains are evil—irrationally and comically so—but like Batman, Bond represents, enforces and protects the same hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that give rise to these villains.
Then there is Star Wars and all this light vs dark side. But if you stop and think about it, Sith and Jedi are just two sides of the same medal. Jedi mind trick that coerces someone to do something against their will is extremely evil by its very concept. Especially in how trivialized its use is in the movies. Also, there is nothing civilized about lightsabers. These are horribly dangerous to the wielder and their opponent alike, will easily cut through hull plating by accident (a bad thing when a cm of material is all that's standing between you and hard vacuum). And would in reality not make a clean cauterized cut, but explosively flash boil the target with the end result like being blown from a cannon.
Lawful, systemic evil is the most devilish kind of evil; it's so subtle it goes unnoticed and is even celebrated as good, no doubt in no small part due to the vast propaganda machine lawful evil loves to build up around itself.
To add to the star wars situation, the jedi are just as bad for the force as the sith, if not worse. They enforce a rigorous dogma that forces their own to suppress all emotion from a young age out of fear that they may be corrupted by the dark side. Not only does this literally make Darth Vader, but it leads to an entire society of emotionally stunted psychics who apparently go rogue very often. They're not sustainable.
Ignoring the new movies because I genuinely can't figure out what they're about, Anakin fulfilled the prophecy at the end of the original 3, destroying the incredibly powerful dogmatic regime of the jedi and killing both master and pupil of the sith leaving only independent, self governed force users dotting the galaxy.
Jedi: We teach restraint to powerful individuals to keep the universe in harmony. This means defending the weak, and often preserving the status quo.
Sith: We teach powerful individuals to fuck shit up, including each other, just because they can. This means culling the weak, and shaking up the status quo.
StarWars Leftists: Jedi are protecting the peace, the council is righteous!
StarWars Libs: Sith are changing the status quo! They're anti corruption!
StarWars Centrists: These two are virtually the same!No, they aren't.
Why the hell don't Star Wars fans understand Star Wars, it's not that deep and even when they go looking they splash around in the shallow end of the pool
The replies to this comment sum up to
But jedi are the good guys cause they say they are the good guys.
It's not just Batman. This is a common trope in the superhero genre. Pop Culture Detective has a great video on the subject: https://youtu.be/LpitmEnaYeU
Good one, didn't think of Batman in this light. Btw it's raison d'être
guys, it's raisin' the etcher
No Country For Old Men.
Also from the same year, There Will Be Blood.
He drank their milkshake.
He drank it ALL UP!
I sometimes enter zoom meetings saying that. Its hilarious.
The Social Network.
Gone Girl (2014). Then again, maybe that one counts as horror.
Nah, I'd call it a thriller.
A Scanner Darkly, the drug epidemic is controlled by the pharmaceutical companies and they are still rich at the end.
spoiler
But the movie ends with the brainfried undercover cop picking a drug-producing flower to send to his friends as a gift. It's implied that's what they need to bring the drug empire down.
It's implied that it could go either way, but the ending it has ended before that could be decided. Also that undercover cop burned out his brain for a cause he never really signed up for.
I am going to put in little shop of horrors since it is a musical. And I really would not consider it horror.
For those of you that don't know there are actually 2 versions of this movie. The original release version where the plants lose and the ORIGINAL test audience version where the plants win.
Globo Gym wins in the original version of Dodgeball, but the test audiences hated it so they added the blindfolded stand-off. I'm mostly happy they changed it, but that original ending would have been so ballsy. Also would make the subtitle better, since most "true" underdogs do lose.
Heh. Ballsy.
The director insists the alien plants winning was the original ending he wanted, but he was forced to give the film a happy ending at the last minute. The director's cut gives you the original ending in all it's evil glory.
There's also an original Little Shop of Horrors released in 1960 that stars a young Jack Nicholson. That film has a different ending than both endings of the 1986 remake.
The original ending was included on one of the recent home video releases. If you like the movie and haven't seen it yet, you really need to.
I've got one that's a gem and hasn't been mentioned yet, for once!
Upgrade (2018)
A guy and his wife are attacked, his wife is murdered and he just barely survives. With the help of a super-chip implanted into his body by a billionaire, he sets out to get revenge. But at what cost?
A stylish, savage techno-action film, basically John Wick but with AI chip. The ending is rightly haunting. Well worth watching!
Such a badass underrated movie!
Intriguing. Is the ending possibly traumatizing ?
Without spoiling too much, the ending is not entirely traumatising in my view, but it personally left me rather depressed, with an acute feeling of loss and hopelessness. Though wouldn't say that any standard trigger/content warnings apply to the ending (the rest of the movie does get rather bloody though)
Half of US «War movies» It's not like the US soldier were less evil than the person they fight
Are you familiar with Nazi Germany?
Just making sure.
Nazis certainly were evil at their core and may be an outlier. War though? It's difficult to not call war and it's atrocities evil. Even if you can prove irrefutably that you are on the "good side", two barracks down, the next town over, a 1000ft overhead something evil could be taking place specifically because war exists, and what's evil hides easiest in chaos and death.
Conflict happens. To the single soldier. The lonely wife. The stricken Mother and Father. War rarely has a true meaning. "Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer" Javik (Mass Effect)
People tend to defend war because of their agreement or disagreement over the reason for a conflict. While there is often a morally right side and wrong side, all I really see are the lives lost.
Good point.
Willy Wonka (Or Charlie) and the Chocolate Factory. And not because of Charlie, but because of Wonka.
The dude's basically a slave owner, paying his workers in cocoa beans, he nearly drowns a kid, poisons another, throws a third into an incinerator, and disfigures a fourth.
He's not a good person.
Willy Wonka/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is almost like a kid-friendly horror movie.
He's also pawning off a ton of OSHA violations the year that OSHA was created, likely seeing such a regulatory body in Britain being likely
There will be blood. Oil mogul thrives while america plunges into depression. Plainview and people like him will go on to be more influential down the line. Like prescott bush or hw bush.
There Will Be Blood
If I remember right, The Usual Suspects
Just a reminder for people casually browsing that unmarked spoilers are present here!
Brazil (1985)
Law abiding citizen
Cabin in the woods
I love Cabin in the Woods, but it arguably falls under horror.
I know, but I didn’t feel like it’s horror in the spirit of the question. OP would need to weigh in.
Glad to see Law Abiding Citizen listed, I hate the ending with a passion.
Many people do, but the whole point of the movie was that the prosecution didn’t go far enough to stop the original perpetrators. The whole point of the ending was that the entire law enforcement system came together to try to determine what it would take to stop one person, and when he tried to stop that he signed his own death warrant.
I guess the iron giant
Time Bandits
Don't touch it!
I'm not convinced evil won in that one, mostly cuz the ending made no sense
12 Monkeys (1995)
Paradox (2016)
Both of these movies deal with time travel, I know that is a turn off for some people. Also in both of these movies it’s not that evil overtly wins, it’s more that protagonists fail to prevent the inciting incident from happening. With Paradox it’s not really implied until the last scene what has actually been going on.
I've always felt the protagonists win in 12 Monkeys. They say in the beginning that the virus outbreak can't be prevented (it's not that kind of time travel), but they needed a pure sample of the virus for the future to cure it. I don't want to spoil anything more than I have, but the plane passenger at the end is relevant. They work in insurance.
Hard question because I watch so much horror..
Ex Machina
How is she evil? Her maker imprisoned and tortured all of his creations. She justifiably wanted to escape. She couldn't trust the kid, he lied to her about there being no other machines. If anyone was "evil" it was the rich dude.
Her maker imprisoned and tortured all of his creations.
I don't recall entirely but I'm pretty sure it didn't know that. Also, I don't think you can 'torture' or 'imprison' computers.
She couldn’t trust the kid, he lied to her about there being no other machines
So, death is justifiable then?
It's an AI, and it was pretty clearly demonstrated at the end that it felt no remorse or compassion for the dude. It was very very good at manipulating the humans and achieving it's goal at any cost, so.. I completely disagree. Evil wins because living, feeling human beings suffered due to the actions of a sexy computer.
Primal Fear (1996). It's arguable whether or not the antagonist is truly evil though.
Time Bandits
It's a fucked up movie for damn sure.
It has one of my favorite lines though: "SLUGS! He invented slugs! They can't hear, they can't speak; they can't operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic?!"
Chinatown
Brazil (1985)
Chinatown (1974)
Conspiracy (2001)
Oceans 11
Arlington road
Came looking for this one.
Had to scroll way too far to find this answer.
Jin-Rou
Grave of the Fireflies
Angel Heart.
Good call. And a good movie. I won't spoil it for people who haven't seen it.
I'm assuming that it's been taken as read that this post will be full of spoilers.
Fallen (1998). IMDB doesn't include 'horror' in the genre list, but it's got supernatural elements to it, I suppose.
The Vanishing (1988) aka Spoorloos. Not the American remake, obvs.Massive spoilers for the movie, obviously, but technically Predestination:
spoiler
The film ends with the main character having fully descended into madness and clearly intent on taking whatever steps he has to to see the love of his life again, even if it means killing tens of thousands of people to do so.
Define "evil". It's a really broad category.
Saltburn
I don't want to spoil anything but if you're even in this thread you need to watch, The Girl With All The Gifts. It's fuckin brilliant!
The book is great as well, there is also a prequel book "The Boy On The Bridge"
Withnail and I
Dick Dastardly gets Muttley back in the new Scooby Doo movie. So he does get what he was after.
12 Monkeys (1995)
Paradox (2016)
Both of these movies deal with time travel, I know that is a turn off for some people.
"The Jetty" inspired 12 Monkeys, for anybody interested in watching that. It's somewhat more experimental
The Ghost Writer
One of my favourite movies of all time
I agree. I wish I didn't love so many of Polanski's movies...
I've got another one: After Hours (1985)
The Last Seduction
Fight Club? I think...
Nearly every western war and spy movie set after WW2
Damaged(2014)
Eli(2019)
Talk to Me(2022)
Us(2019)
!Arlington Road!<