10 Best Movies Where We Meet The Villain First
6. The Thing
By the very nature of the movie, audiences aren’t supposed to know who to trust when watching The Thing. It’s what the entire narrative is based on, and is what makes the ending of the movie so ambiguous and iconic.
This actually starts from the very first scene when the shape-shifting alien is first introduced, though on first viewing there’s no indication as to what the dog actually is. All naive audiences see is a poor dog running what must have been a marathon through the arctic snow with a helicopter trying to kill it.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for the movie to show exactly what the dog is, ultimately making sense of the initial chase. It wasn’t just a cute, fluffy mutt, it was an alien that would eventually see to the death of most people in the movie.
The Thing could have almost started with the hideous transformation of the dog into the alien's true form, but first showing it being chased so vigorously immediately produced intrigue and mystery, and ultimately established that absolutely no one was to be trusted.