10 Horror Movies Where The Final Girl Was The Villain
Not all heroes wear capes; not all villains wear codpieces.
A well-trodden trope of contemporary horror, the final girl has seen a meteoric rise since the indie slashers of the 1970s, becoming a mainstay character and evolving out of the original teetotal brunette model to become a bona fide badass.
Typically the one female character left at the end of a film -- and often the one who either confronts the main villain, lives to tell the tale, or both (if she's lucky) -- the final girl's role in horror has expanded so far over the past couple of decades that it's kind of come round again in a horseshoe shape.
What do we mean, you ask? Well, now she's sometimes the villain too.
Yes, there is now a teeming cast of kick-ass women in the horror genre who have had their cake and eaten it, screaming and fighting and running and gunning while also taking the time to just be a bit evil. Whether they're robbing blind war veterans, hearing out the murderous maniac, getting their jollies from their boyfriend's fiery demise, or taking charge of the blood, guts and mayhem from the very start, these 10 final girls have made some pretty serious villains of themselves.
10. Kate - Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)
While neither as artistic, original nor dedicated to the craft of horror moviemaking as Vincenzo Natali's Cube (1997), Cube 2: Hypercube is nevertheless precisely the kind of conceptually OTT nonsense that keep series like this fun for as long as they last.
Where the first film cut its teeth on a pre-Saw, Saw-like premise (a group of strangers go from room to room navigating various sensor-activated, machine-based traps), Cube 2 deals in traps spanning the gamut of time, space and reality, all contained within a nifty and overwhelmingly humungous tesseract.
Among the structure's apparent victims is Kate Filmore (Kari Matchett), a psychotherapist and empathetic character whose attempts to broker peace and caution against more rash and extreme moves leaves her the only one still breathing by the end of the film. Well, that and a whole lot of espionage. Kate is in fact an operative working for Izon, a faceless defense contractor who sent her in to get the information they needed from a fugitive inside the tesseract, her survival all but assured from the beginning. Thus, Kate is both final girl and villain.
But the real villain is capitalism. Right? Right?!