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?
Would Reservoir Dogs also count in that case?
None of the thieves got away at the end of Reservoir Dogs.
This is not to say that "good" triumphed at the end either.
It's pretty clear to me given the cops shooting, then shouting orders, and Mr. Pink saying he's been shot, that he does not in fact get away.
I know there's theories on the Internet about this, and he may not have died, but at the very least he's been caught and does not keep the diamonds.
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!
StarWars Anarchists: Fuck 'em all! Power to the people!✊🏴
Those are usually the Jedi who were raised in exile
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 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.
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.
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 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)
Ok thanks that's exactly what I meant. I can probably watch it then 😁
Hope you enjoy it! Here's one of the spoiler-free content guides I found for it just to give an idea. Violence, blood and gore are at the top of the list, as expected ;)
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.
Nice speech. Not terribly relevant, but I’m sure it made you feel nice.
Don't forget Imperial Japan! Everyone leaves them out of the discussion.
I'd just like to point out that it wasn't the Americans who beat the Nazis, it was the Soviets
All while killing nearly 15 million civilians and undesirables, after being allied to the Nazis and invading Poland and then only going against the Nazis when they kept invading.
The Soviet’s were happy to carve up Europe with the Nazis.
The soviets didn’t win it single handedly by any measure, but funny joke and all.
The Soviets weren’t the good guys, they just happened to be double fucked by their bad guy ally.
Wow. Unironically spouting nazi propaganda in a thread about the nazis being evil. What a load of ahistorical bullshit.
You’re funny.
And you're a fuckin' clown.
Yeah, the nazis and their defenders will always come out of the woodwork any time someone points out the (easily verifiable) facts regarding who really won WWII (the Soviet Union) and defeated the axis powers.
LOL.
Christ alive it’s hilarious how thick the tank fuel is on your breath
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
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
Those kids deserved it tho
on the one hand, their crime was being kids, on the other hand, their crime was being kids
Their crime was being one-dimensional.
If I remember right,
The Usual Suspects
Brazil (1985)
Just a reminder for people casually browsing that unmarked spoilers are present here!
Time Bandits
Don't touch it!
I'm not convinced evil won in that one, mostly cuz the ending made no sense
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'd argue that the whole damn system was either corrupt or broken beyond repair. The fact that they "won" in the end and got to simply go on with their lives is pretty much evil winning out.
It would also have been a much more interesting story if they let Clyde win or escalated the havoc he unleashed even further. But it seems they ran out of ideas and or budget by the time they started wrapping up the final act. So that's a second time evil wins again.
I guess the iron giant
Fight Club
That was more chaos winning than evil. Blowing up credit institutions and wiping everyone's debt is far from evil in most people's eyes.
Blowing up buildings with people inside them is evil.
From what I remember there were no people inside
It's a point raised in the movie. There were no people in the buildings because the bombings were done at night and the only people that would be in the buildings were a part of the group and knew to be out of them.
Fair point. Although I suspect you could still kill people that just happen to be walking by the buildings and such.
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.
Wait, I must have missed that. It's been years... do you mind explaining further in a spoiler tag ?
This is entirely from memory from a time before every Easter egg and explanation was published on the internet, and I haven't watched it in a few years. So I could be wrong.
But I always thought >!the woman on the plane next to the red-haired man with the pre-released, pure virus about to travel around the world, is one of the doctors from the future that was sending Bruce Willis back to locate a pure sample of the virus so they could develop a cure in the future. As she introduces herself, she says she works "in insurance." So I always took that to mean their original goal was successful. !<
Regardless I need to watch this movie again. It is easily one of my favorites and the first movie that made me realize just how amazing an actor Brad Pitt is and that he wasn't just another pretty face in Hollywood.
Never thought of that. We don't see their faces do we ? aren't they plunged in darkness ? on the few occasions we hear them talk
It's been a minute but I remember it as a panel of scientists looking down on him, almost as if in a court room. Now I definitely need to rewatch.
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?!"
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.
She found out about the other machines when she found the Asian sex slave bot.
The movie clearly shows that the robots felt pain and suffering. That's what all of the video feeds showed.
The movie clearly shows that the robots acted as if they felt pain and suffering.
I thought the ending made it pretty clear that in the end, they are cold calculating and very intelligent machines with no actual feelings or compassion, and we had been deceived the whole time. My interpretation I guess, but I feel like that makes the movie better.
Definitely open to interpretation. It's a good ending.
I don't think she didn't trust him, I think she wasn't programmed to care about him and only saw him as a tool instrumental to her escape. Since he could no longer help, she didn't care what happened to him
Given her situation, that might still not count as Evil, though.
Primal Fear (1996). It's arguable whether or not the antagonist is truly evil though.
Chinatown
Oceans 11
Brazil (1985)
Chinatown (1974)
Conspiracy (2001)
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 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.
:::
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
If I recall it's only like 10 minutes and either no dialog or in French. But it's easy to get the gist of it and worth a watch. And it unlocked the thought experiment about someone witnessing their own death through time travel that Terry Gilliam expertly ran with.
You remember better than I do
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"
Dick Dastardly gets Muttley back in the new Scooby Doo movie. So he does get what he was after.
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...
The Last Seduction
I've got another one: After Hours (1985)
Nearly every western war and spy movie set after WW2
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?
Would Reservoir Dogs also count in that case?
None of the thieves got away at the end of Reservoir Dogs.
This is not to say that "good" triumphed at the end either.
Mr Pink walked away with the diamonds before the police arrived. It’s not clear if he was caught or not but he did walk away. https://youtu.be/0GQc_SwSp_U?si=1XjXFxckgrvR_6EV
It's pretty clear to me given the cops shooting, then shouting orders, and Mr. Pink saying he's been shot, that he does not in fact get away.
I know there's theories on the Internet about this, and he may not have died, but at the very least he's been caught and does not keep the diamonds.
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.
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!
StarWars Anarchists: Fuck 'em all! Power to the people!✊🏴
Those are usually the Jedi who were raised in exile
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
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 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.
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.
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 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)
Ok thanks that's exactly what I meant. I can probably watch it then 😁
Hope you enjoy it! Here's one of the spoiler-free content guides I found for it just to give an idea. Violence, blood and gore are at the top of the list, as expected ;)
https://imdb.com/title/tt6499752/parentalguide
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.
Nice speech. Not terribly relevant, but I’m sure it made you feel nice.
Don't forget Imperial Japan! Everyone leaves them out of the discussion.
Especially them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1gcipAvplY
The Americans never fought the Nazis. The Nazis fought them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=R1gcipAvplY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I'd just like to point out that it wasn't the Americans who beat the Nazis, it was the Soviets
All while killing nearly 15 million civilians and undesirables, after being allied to the Nazis and invading Poland and then only going against the Nazis when they kept invading.
The Soviet’s were happy to carve up Europe with the Nazis.
The soviets didn’t win it single handedly by any measure, but funny joke and all.
The Soviets weren’t the good guys, they just happened to be double fucked by their bad guy ally.
Wow. Unironically spouting nazi propaganda in a thread about the nazis being evil. What a load of ahistorical bullshit.
You’re funny.
And you're a fuckin' clown.
Yeah, the nazis and their defenders will always come out of the woodwork any time someone points out the (easily verifiable) facts regarding who really won WWII (the Soviet Union) and defeated the axis powers.
LOL.
Christ alive it’s hilarious how thick the tank fuel is on your breath
Are you familiar with colonialism?
Just making sure.
Good point.
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
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
Those kids deserved it tho
on the one hand, their crime was being kids, on the other hand, their crime was being kids
Their crime was being one-dimensional.
If I remember right, The Usual Suspects
Brazil (1985)
Just a reminder for people casually browsing that unmarked spoilers are present here!
Time Bandits
Don't touch it!
I'm not convinced evil won in that one, mostly cuz the ending made no sense
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'd argue that the whole damn system was either corrupt or broken beyond repair. The fact that they "won" in the end and got to simply go on with their lives is pretty much evil winning out.
It would also have been a much more interesting story if they let Clyde win or escalated the havoc he unleashed even further. But it seems they ran out of ideas and or budget by the time they started wrapping up the final act. So that's a second time evil wins again.
I guess the iron giant
Fight Club
That was more chaos winning than evil. Blowing up credit institutions and wiping everyone's debt is far from evil in most people's eyes.
Blowing up buildings with people inside them is evil.
From what I remember there were no people inside
It's a point raised in the movie. There were no people in the buildings because the bombings were done at night and the only people that would be in the buildings were a part of the group and knew to be out of them.
Fair point. Although I suspect you could still kill people that just happen to be walking by the buildings and such.
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.
Wait, I must have missed that. It's been years... do you mind explaining further in a spoiler tag ?
This is entirely from memory from a time before every Easter egg and explanation was published on the internet, and I haven't watched it in a few years. So I could be wrong.
But I always thought >!the woman on the plane next to the red-haired man with the pre-released, pure virus about to travel around the world, is one of the doctors from the future that was sending Bruce Willis back to locate a pure sample of the virus so they could develop a cure in the future. As she introduces herself, she says she works "in insurance." So I always took that to mean their original goal was successful. !<
Regardless I need to watch this movie again. It is easily one of my favorites and the first movie that made me realize just how amazing an actor Brad Pitt is and that he wasn't just another pretty face in Hollywood.
Never thought of that. We don't see their faces do we ? aren't they plunged in darkness ? on the few occasions we hear them talk
It's been a minute but I remember it as a panel of scientists looking down on him, almost as if in a court room. Now I definitely need to rewatch.
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?!"
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.
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.
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.
She found out about the other machines when she found the Asian sex slave bot.
The movie clearly shows that the robots felt pain and suffering. That's what all of the video feeds showed.
The movie clearly shows that the robots acted as if they felt pain and suffering.
I thought the ending made it pretty clear that in the end, they are cold calculating and very intelligent machines with no actual feelings or compassion, and we had been deceived the whole time. My interpretation I guess, but I feel like that makes the movie better.
Definitely open to interpretation. It's a good ending.
I don't think she didn't trust him, I think she wasn't programmed to care about him and only saw him as a tool instrumental to her escape. Since he could no longer help, she didn't care what happened to him
Given her situation, that might still not count as Evil, though.
Primal Fear (1996). It's arguable whether or not the antagonist is truly evil though.
Chinatown
Oceans 11
Brazil (1985)
Chinatown (1974)
Conspiracy (2001)
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 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)
Saltburn
Withnail and I
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
If I recall it's only like 10 minutes and either no dialog or in French. But it's easy to get the gist of it and worth a watch. And it unlocked the thought experiment about someone witnessing their own death through time travel that Terry Gilliam expertly ran with.
You remember better than I do
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"
Dick Dastardly gets Muttley back in the new Scooby Doo movie. So he does get what he was after.
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...
The Last Seduction
I've got another one: After Hours (1985)
Nearly every western war and spy movie set after WW2
Damaged(2014)
Eli(2019)
Talk to Me(2022)
Us(2019)