10 MORE Horror Movies That Tricked You Into Rooting For The Monster
3. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
It's tough to know quite what the filmmakers behind Resident Evil: Apocalypse were thinking with their conception of franchise icon Nemesis.
Despite being arguably the most iconic villain in the series behind Albert Wesker and a genuinely terrifying entity in the games, this movie made a bewildering choice to manipulate fans into rooting for Nemesis.
Picking up from the cliffhanger ending of the first film, it's eventually confirmed that Nemesis is indeed Alice's pal Matt (Eric Mabius), having undergone an experimental mutation process courtesy of Umbrella.
This immediately makes Nemesis a sympathetic monster, far from his straight-up terrifying depiction in the games, and by the time he's getting beaten by Alice in a fistfight, it's basically impossible not to pity the big lug.
And on top of that, the third act engineers a ridiculous face-turn for Nemesis, who turns on Major Cain (Thomas Kretschmann) and the Umbrella troops, ultimately sacrificing himself to save Alice.
Though many fans felt that Nemesis' portrayal in Apocalypse was tantamount to character assassination, others argued that it brought more nuance to the villain by giving him his own antagonist to wage war against.