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Horror movies have created some of the most iconic villains in cinema. Masked slashers, dream demons, and visitors from other dimensions fill the genre as plucky protagonists fight for survival and a victory for all that is good. Often, even if the evil is defeated it will return in a fresh new installment if the character is popular enough. However, good doesn't always prevail and the bad guy ends the movie victorious, a trail of bodies in their wake.

This list looks at 5 horror movies where the villain clutched victory from the protagonists, where evil wins out and the world is a worse place for it. Keep reading to find out which villains get one up over the good guys, but beware, there are spoilers ahead.

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Saw

Saw Jisgaw

When Saw was released in 2004 it changed the horror movie genre. Directed by James Wan and written by Wan and Leigh Whannell, the movie launched there careers of both who have since become giants of the genre. The story centers around 2 men who have awoken in a grimy bathroom, chained up and with no clue how they got there or why they are there. Also in the room is a dead body. It is revealed they are being held by the Jigsaw killer, an unknown assailant who forces his victims to play twisted games for their survival and his amusement.

Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell carry the film on their shoulders as the 2 men that are trapped together, but the iconic puppet design and gravelly voice of Tobin Bell as Jigsaw created a new horror icon and a franchise that continues now. Not to mention the inventive traps and puzzles that only escalated as the franchise continued.

Rosemary's Baby

Mia Farrow holding her hand over her mouth in Rosemary's Baby

The 1968 movie Rosemary's Baby is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Mia Farrow stars as Rosemary, a woman who becomes pregnant after she and her husband move to the Bramford apartment building. As her pregnancy goes on, she begins to think that the other inhabitants of the building and her husband are part of a Satanic cult aiming to steal her baby and use it in rituals. The film tackles rape and the hysterical woman trope along with unnatural forces and endures because of the themes that run through it that elevate it from the crowd of other supernatural films of its ilk.

Filled with slow creeping dread and nightmare visuals that plague Rosemary, the demonic presence that wants to claim her baby and her soul slowly permeates every aspect of her life leaving nowhere to turn. The fear of being believed delusional when in fact evil is closing in creates a tense and charged atmosphere, making the payoff where the Devil gets his dues all the more impacting.

Cabin In The Woods

cabin-in-the-woods

Cabin In The Woods is a movie that takes every single horror genre convention, mixes them, and then proceeds to subvert them. As is commonplace, a group of young college students is going on a trip to stay at a cabin in the woods. All the stereotypical archetypes are present and integral to the ultimate payoff. Unbeknownst to the group, a shadowy corporation is orchestrating their every move to create the perfect circumstances to sacrifice them to the Elder Gods and prevent the end of the world. It turns out the shady corporation has an underground facility that houses hundreds of archetypal monsters, from zombies to Cenobite homages and toothy ballerinas each released to enact a specific scenario depending on the unwitting choices of the sacrifices.

With standout performances from Fran Kranz, Kristin Connolly, and Bradley Whitford, Cabin In The Woods has you rooting for the hapless students as the ground beneath them splits and the Apocalypse begins. There is also a great cameo from Sigourney Weaver as The Director of the corporation that may sway you away from supporting the protagonists.

Phantasm

Phantasm movie

1979s' Phantasm saw the birth of a franchise and an iconic villain in Angus Scrimm's Tall Man. Scrimm plays a menacing undertaker who is from another planet and is taking the corpses of the recently deceased and transforming them into zombie slaves to provide labor on his planet. 13-year-old Mike, his brother Jody and their friend Reggie become wise to the Tall Man's plot and become entangled with him in a very bad way. The Tall Man has all manner of nightmares at his disposal, from hooded dwarf Zombies to flying bladed spheres that hunt people down and drill into their heads.

Scrimm's presence cannot be overlooked and is a huge contributor to the success of the franchise, with his looming stature, skeletal frame, and booming resonant voice, he scarred generations of horror fans. By the end of the movie Mike is alone with no family left believing the whole encounter with the Tall Man was a horrible nightmare until the hands of the Tall Man break through his mirror to pull him inside.

A Nightmare On Elm Street

nightmare-on-elm-street-freddy

Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund) has become one of horror's biggest characters since his introduction in 1984's A Nightmare On Elm Street. While future entries in the franchise saw Freddy become a wise-cracking figure of fun that audiences rooted for, the original is more of a pure horror experience. The dreams of the children in Springwood, Ohio are being invaded by a hideously disfigured man with a knife-fingered glove who stalks and kills them as they sleep. Heather Langenkamp starred as Nancy, who goes up against Freddy with the help of her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp in his first feature role) by subsisting on coffee and caffeine pills. As her friends are murdered horrifically around her, Nancy is running out of time to find a way to defeat Freddy, but how can you kill a dream?

At the end of the movie, Nancy realizes she can pull Freddy out of the dream and hurt him in the real world. Believing him defeated, Nancy finally falls asleep and dreams of her friends pulling up to pick her up in a car that suspiciously shares the same color scheme as Freddy's red and green sweater. Iconic scenes such as Tina appearing to Nancy in a body bag and Glen being swallowed by his bed and turned into a blood fountain helped to build the mythology of Freddy and cement him in the horror hall of fame.

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