10 Horror Sequels That Turned The Villain Into A Hero

The vast majority of commercially successful horror movies will get at least a sequel or ten - that's just how Hollywood works - but it can certainly be tricky to maintain interest in an ongoing horror franchise, as audiences may quickly tire of seeing the same formula repeated ad nauseam.

As such, filmmakers must come up with ways to keep things fresh, and this often ends up being a flipping of the villainous script. That is to say, the established antagonist is reintroduced, throughout whatever means, as a hero.

It's naturally an extremely tough trick to pull off, to convince audiences that the murderous force they've been rooting against is now a good guy, but when it works, it can help reinvent a franchise forever more. And for better or worse, the following horror movie villains were all turned into heroes. 

Perhaps a backstory was revealed that put them in a more sympathetic light, or they teamed up with other heroes to take on an even more evil antagonistic force. Whatever the reason, these horror villains all turned from heel to face in a sequel.

Now in total fairness, Saw X is both a sequel and a prequel, being set between the first and second Saw movies, but its big, fascinating hook is that it offers up a more sympathetic depiction of the series' antagonist, John Kramer, aka Jigsaw (Tobin Bell).

This time around, Kramer heads to Mexico to undergo an experimental medical procedure that appears to cure his cancer, but alas, he soon comes to learn that he's actually been scammed by the doctor, Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund).

Kramer, who was on the verge of quitting his murderous extracurricular activity when he thought he was cured, suddenly springs back into action, plotting a new series of games designed to test everyone involved in Cecilia's scam. And so, it's never been easier to root for Kramer, who is only torturing and killing scumbags exploiting the terminally ill. 

In Cecilia, the series found an antagonist even more monstrous than John Kramer himself, and while it doesn't erase every depraved thing Kramer would go on to do throughout the series, it was a clever way to reframe the guy as a more heroic character.