10 Movies That Ought to Have a Villain But Don't

With Enter the Void, Gaspar Noe guides us on a DMT trip to the other side when drug dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) is shot in the head in the first act and his soul takes a wild ride through past and present. This begins a twisty personal narrative offset against a backdrop of psychedelic visuals that dip in and out throughout, channelling, modernising and redefining the iconic Stargate sequence from the director's favourite movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, paying homage while doing something postmodern and new.

Tokyo itself provides fertile imagery for the film's visual eccentricities, the neon and claustrophobia of the metropolis shaping Oscar's physical and post-physical journeys, and offering up some pretty grimy and miserable corners in which to unfold a tragic narrative. Botched deals, drug rings, abortions and car crashes - there is not much Noe won't throw at us. But, while Irreversible and Climax have several bad actors at their core, pushing the drama along against their protagonists' wills, Enter the Void lacks that evil figure to coalesce around. 

Like the Greek tragedies, the miseries throughout Oscar and his sister Linda's (Paz de la Huerta) lives are mostly the product of luck, chance, fate and their own character flaws. But all's well that ends well, and Enter the Void definitely concludes with an, umm, happy ending.