10 Horror Movie Villains KILLED Before The End

Dario Argento's Tenebre is an especially interesting example because the movie's original serial killer ends up being murdered by a second one, who takes up their mantle for the film's remainder.

Tenebre begins with horror author Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) learning that a serial killer is slaughtering their way across Rome using his novels as inspiration. Roughly an hour into the movie, TV interviewer Cristiano Berti (John Steiner) - who is shown to have a suspiciously strong interest in the case - is hacked to death by an axe.

With the police discovering evidence that Berti was obsessed with Neal's books, it seems blatantly obvious that he was indeed the killer. But with a second killer now on the loose and enacting their own rampage, that begs the question - who is it?

And so comes the big ending twist; the second killer was Neal himself, who after hearing Berti confess to the prior killings, effectively snapped and killed Berti with an axe, at which point he continued killing to satisfy his psychotic bloodlust.

Switching out one serial killer for another two-thirds of the way through the movie is virtually unheard of in the genre, and yet, it totally works in this case.