10 Movies You Didn't Realise You Were Following The Villain

10. Memento

Christopher Nolan's ingenious thriller Memento does a fantastic job of making the audience initially entirely sympathetic towards the plight of protagonist Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce).

Following a brutal home invasion which caused the death of his wife (Jorja Fox), Lenny is desperately trying to find the surviving attacker, all while being unable to create new memories due to the amnesia he suffers with since the attack.

But the film's big twist, of course, is that Leonard's wife actually survived the attack, and only died when Lenny accidentally administered the incorrect insulin dose to her due to his amnesia.

As tragic an accident as that is, what ultimately makes Lenny Memento's villain is his decision to use his amnesia to his advantage, to deceive himself of the truth that he unintentionally killed his own wife, instead concocting a revenge narrative to distract himself from what really happened.

There are certainly other dubious characters in the movie, namely Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who helped Lenny get revenge a year prior but continually used him to rip off drug dealers.

Even so, Lenny's climactic decision to frame Teddy as his wife's killer, in turn ensuring he'll kill him in the future, is simply unacceptable enough to make him the film's true bad guy.