10 Movies Where Evil Won

3. Chinatown

And now we pivot back to a far more tangible and real evil in Roman Polanski's masterful 1974 film noir Chinatown.

In one of the all-time best downer endings in cinema history, protagonist Jake Gittes' (Jack Nicholson) plan to get Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) and her daughter/sister Katherine (Belinda Palmer) safely away from their rapist father/grandfather Noah Cross (John Huston) goes horribly wrong.

As Cross attempts to take custody of young Katherine, Evelyn shoots him and drives away, at which point the police shoot Evelyn, killing her.

A distraught Katherine is then taken away by Cross, presumably free to be abused by him forever more, while Gittes is powerless to intervene, and effectively told to just move on ("Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown").

The gritty gumshoe protagonist can't save the day, the female lead gets shot and the antagonist gets away scot-free with the movie's only remaining vestige of anything approaching innocence. Flawlessly devastating.