10 Awesome Movies Where The Bad Guy Wins

3. And That's Why You Don't Trust Murderers - The Vanishing

The Vanishing remains one of the best and most terrifying horror films ever made because of its hopeless and shocking ending. But from minute one,George Sluizer's masterful thriller is keen to show us something we haven't seen before, introducing us to the villain, Raymond, from the outset, showing him going about his daily life rather than resorting to a twist reveal later on. When a young couple stops at a petrol station, the woman, Saskia, goes missing, and her boyfriend, Rex, spends the next few years frantically, obsessively searching for her.

Eventually Raymond, intrigued by Rex's obsession, offers to explain what happened to Saskia, proclaiming that if Rex drinks some coffee he hands him, he can experience exactly what Saskia did. Overcome by his curiosity, Rex drinks it, only to take up in a coffin, buried alive just as Saskia was. Raymond then goes back to his family life, and that's that.

Sluzier later remade the film himself with Keifer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges, a vastly inferior effort that changes the ending - the girlfriend still dies, but Rex's character kills Raymond - and completely denies audiences the same terrifying experience of the original.