Top 10 Movies Where Evil Triumphs Over Good
In an ideal world, good will always triumph over evil. But this world is far from being ideal. Pardon the cynicism, but more often than not, bad people have been getting the better of the good guys all throughout human history.
Hollywood has been trying to make up for it by producing loads of movies with happy endings that show heroes giving villains what they deserve. There are, however, movies that show the opposite, where the bad guy almost always gets away, the same way countless real-life terrorists never get caught or corrupt politicians remain in power or crime bosses stay out of the long arm of the law's reach. Here are 10 films that showcase evil winning over good.
10. Identity
John Cusack plays Ed, one of the many personalities of convicted murderer and death row inmate Malcolm Rivers caught in a battle for survival inside the killer's mind. The murderous personality wins out and takes over Rivers, who eventually escapes from custody.
9. No Country For Old Men
Anton Chigurh, the mass murdering character that got Spanish actor Javier Bardem an Oscar, doesn't exactly get away unscathed, as the final minutes of the film shows him breaking his arm in a car accident. But he does get away, and is never made to pay for cold-bloodedly taking the lives of innocent and not-so-innocent characters alike, including that of the protagonist's wife, played by Kelly Macdonald.
8. Saw
For all his intentions of wanting his victims to survive with a better appreciation of life, Jigsaw sure is a prolific murderer, and a sadistic one at that. And while he's basically screwed as he's got some inoperable brain tumor, he gets the better of everyone else in this torture porn franchise, and never gets arrested for his crimes.
7. The Silence of the Lambs
While the focal villain in this film is a cross-dressing psychopath known as "Buffalo Bill", the man who helps FBI agent Clarice Starling track him down is no less evil. Hannibal Lecter, brilliant psychiatrist, serial killer and cannibal, is in fact hands down more evil than anyone else in the film, and he escapes jail towards the end of the movie to kill and feast on humans some more.
6. Seven
Sure, the creepy killer played by Kevin Spacey swallows an entire clip courtesy of Brad Pitt's gun towards the end, but he still "wins", as he gets to chop Gwyneth Paltrow's head off and put it in a box, and push Pitt to complete his entire "Seven Deadly Sins" killing spree.
5. Natural Born Killers
Mickey and Mallory, the mass murdering lovers played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in this Oliver Stone film, get the ultimate happy ending: they're shown happily raising a family of their own, playing with their kids and stuff at the end.
4. Fallen
Denzel Washington plays a cop who hunts down a demon who moves from body to body and makes its hosts kill. At the end, just when you think he's finally going to finish off the demon by luring it into the woods, where there are no bodies to transfer to but Denzel's poison-laden body, a cat streaks out of nowhere and provides the demon a close, but nevertheless complete getaway.
3. The Usual Suspects
Near-mythical criminal mastermind Keyser Söze orders a boatload of people terminated, and makes an idiot out of a US customs official who lets him go free based on a story that Verbal Kint, Söze's "crippled" alter ego, weaves entirely out of BS.
2. Primal Fear
This is the film that made Edward Norton famous, and for good reason. He's absolutely mesmerizing as the seemingly innocent altar boy accused of murdering a priest. He claims to have a split personality, and his lawyer, played by Richard Gere, successfully defends him in court, leading to his eventual release. Then he 'fesses up, that there is actually no second personality, that he was just faking the entire time, that he is one murderous bastard that will be set free.
1. Arlington Road
The reason this movie is at number one is the fact that what happens to Jeff Bridges' character could happen to anyone, or, for all we know, has already actually happened to someone. Bridges plays a history professor who suspects his neighbors are terrorists. He's eventually proven right, but was set up by the same neighbors to unknowingly deliver a powerful bomb into a federal building himself, and is ultimately branded as the lone terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds. The villains, played Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack, quietly move out of the neighborhood, their mission accomplished.
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