20 Horror Movies That Made You Root For The Wrong Person
1. Strange Darling
Strange Darling is told in a non-linear way, dumping viewers straight into Chapter 3 of a six-chapter story. As a result, a lot of info is thrown at you straight away, forcing you to try and piece things together.
The first thing we see is Alice, a scantily clad, bloodied woman missing her ear, running in terror from a mysterious gunman called The Demon. There are split-second flashbacks of The Demon intensely choking Alice, indicating he's tried to strangle her to death earlier, before the story abruptly jumps to Chapter 5, with Alice hiding in an elderly couple's house, both of the couple now murdered.
Not all the facts are established yet, but the signs place Alice as The Final Girl and The Demon as The Villain. After all, his name is literally The Demon. But slowly but surely, it's apparent that the narrative was designed to hoodwink the audience.
It turns out that Alice is a serial killer who intended The Demon to be her latest victim. The choking sequence in the flashback was part of bedroom role-play that Alice initiated, and on top of that, she was the one who slaughtered the elderly couple.
Although most twists seem glaring in hindsight, nobody had any reason to second-guess the status of the two lead characters in Strange Darling, making the reveal more hard-hitting.