In almost every horror movie ever made, a hero or heroine faces a ruthless killing machine. In the end, the monster is dead (until the next sequel), and life returns to normal, but that’s not the only format a horror movie can take. There is a subgenre known as Reverse Horror, which works like this: The monster is the protagonist and the victims are the bad guys. That’s an oversimplification, but it will make sense when you take a look at these ten reverse horror movies that are arguably the best the genre has to offer. By the way, the spoilers to follow …
10.Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil
While the movie is definitely a first-time comedy, it’s also a brilliant take on the upside-down horror movie concept, making it the best example ever filmed. This 2010 film starring Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk is narrated from two points of view; the two boys from the title, and a group of teenagers who immediately assume they are evil monsters of the woods. In a normal horror movie, the plot would be simple: privileged kids fight their way into hill country territory, make bad decisions, and end up being slaughtered, but that’s not how this movie plays out.
Instead, Tucker and Dale are normal guys who enjoy spending time in the woods. Sure, they’re rednecks, but not evil monsters. Despite this, a series of misunderstandings makes it clear to the children that they are the monsters from the movies they think they are, so they decide to do something about it. Of course, every action they take leads to their death in brutal and violent ways, which only serves to scare the titular heroes of this film. The movie is clever in the way it approaches the reverse horror genre, and it’s just as funny.
9.Frankenstein
The story of Frankenstein’s monster is one of sheer tragedy, and that’s not just because people misidentify the nameless monster as “Frankenstein” all the time. The story is about a scientist who wants to conquer the barrier between life and death. To do this, he commits various taboo acts by unearthing the bodies of the recently deceased. He then unites them, and in an effort to play God, Dr. Victor Frankenstein manages to bring a superhuman specimen to life, and Frankenstein’s Monster was given life.
When the supposed monster makes his way into the world, he is immediately treated as a villain. Every interaction with the people he meets is terrible for him. The thing about the monster is that it never asked to be turned into what it became. Despite looking like a walking corpse of a giant monster, he was misunderstood and afraid of the outside world. He was treated like a monster, but in the end, it was the villagers who attacked him and his creator, who treated him terribly, the real monsters of the movie.
8. I Am Legend
In most of I Am Legend, it’s clear who the monsters are, as they look and act exactly how a movie monster should be. They are nocturnal, enjoy eating the flesh of the living, attack anything they see, are allergic to sunlight, and have an unpleasant disposition. The film follows Will Smith’s Colonel Robert Neville as he works tirelessly to find a cure for the infection that has turned most of the world’s survivors into ruthless killing machines. He does this by taking them captive and injecting them with experimental vaccines based on his own immunity.
That last part should have been a clue, and it becomes apparent as the movie progresses to the third act. Neville has been kidnapping these so-called monsters for years, experimented on them, and eventually ended up killing them in the process. Instead of the infected being the monsters, Neville was the monster all along, and the real victims were infected, who have adapted to his condition to become the next step in human evolution. Neville enacted the terror that struck during the day when they were vulnerable, and he realizes this too late when the movie comes to an end.
7.I Know What You Did Last Summer
When I Know What You Did Last Summer hit theaters in 1997, it offered a somewhat new take on the slasher horror genre. In the movie, a group of children drinks and drive when they lead someone on a dark road. When frightened by the implication of what a DUI / vehicular manslaughter charge will affect their future, they agree to dump the body in the water and never again discuss what happened. They continued to live their lives, but a year later, a letter arrives at one of the girls’ houses, saying, “I know what you did last summer!”
From that point on, each of the people involved in the hit and run ends up on the wrong side of a massive hook as they are killed one by one. It’s a typical slasher horror movie, but with a twist. The killer is the man who was beaten and left for dead a year earlier. While his method of revenge is a bit psychotic, it’s hard to argue that his victims didn’t deserve what they got. After all, they almost killed him, they threw him into the water and went on with their lives, leaving him to pick up the pieces of himself before finally going after the (teenage) monsters that nearly killed him.
6.King Kong
Whether it’s the original King Kong from 1933 or the Peter Jackson remake from 2005, the basis of the film remains the same. A group of filmmakers heads to a mysterious place called Skull Island, where a beast is said to roam the dangerous landscape. Along with the filmmakers are the actors, one of whom is a beautiful woman who plays the female lead in the film. After arriving, everything goes to hell quite quickly, and the woman is sacrificed to Kong, the giant ape of the island, but he does not eat her, he likes it.
Whether it’s the original King Kong from 1933 or the Peter Jackson remake from 2005, the basis of the film remains the same. A group of filmmakers heads to a mysterious place called Skull Island, where a beast is said to roam the dangerous landscape. Along with the filmmakers are the actors, one of whom is a beautiful woman who plays the female lead in the film. After arriving, everything goes to hell quite quickly, and the woman is sacrificed to Kong, the giant ape of the island, but he does not eat her, he likes it.
5.Swamp Thing
At first glance, the mud monster that is Swamp Thing is a classic monster from the movie, but it didn’t always look like that. Before calling the swamps home, he was a man named Alec Holland, but when Dr. Anton Arcane sprayed him with chemicals, set him on fire, and threw him into the Louisiana swamps, his body mutated. He changed from being a normal human and transformed into a new type of creature … a swamp monster better described as a Swamp Thing!
Its appearance is indeed that of a classic movie monster, as it is composed of the mud and plant matter of the swamp. He also has superpowers, including increased strength, durability, and the ability to make plants grow and do his bidding, but he’s not the monster in this movie. He is actually the hero, and when his transformation is complete, he takes revenge on Dr. Arcade and his minions. Anyone who knew the character before watching the film would have known who the true hero and villain of the film were, but a casual viewer … not so much.
4.The Cabin In The Woods
At first glance, Cabin in the Woods looks like a typical horror movie with zombies, a bunch of unsuspecting teenagers, and a bunch of bad decisions, but it’s much more than that. The plot follows a group of teenagers who vacation in a cabin in the woods, where they are victims of zombies, but the undead is not the real monsters of this film. Something is happening below the surface, literally below the surface of the cabin, which is where the real villains of this movie can be found.
A couple of engineers named Sitterson and Hadley are the real bad guys in this movie. They are the ones who manipulate the events in and around the cabin to ensure that the children face the proper deaths in horror movies. It turns out that they are part of an international project aimed at preventing humanity from being destroyed by horrible underground deities called the Ancients. They do this by manipulating children through pheromones and drugs that engage them in activities and other horror movie tropes that are used to lure monsters. In the end, the children turn out to be the victims of the engineers and their Headmaster, while the zombies turn out to be little more than a tool used by them.
3.The Others
Nikole Kidman portrayed the role of Grace in 2001’s The Others, and the film is incredibly bizarre but in a good way. At first, she is shown to be incredibly overprotective of her children, who are allergic to sunlight (they are not vampires, it is a real condition). She hires three people to help her on her property, but soon after doing this, weird things start happening throughout the house. The curtains are drawn throughout the house, putting the children in danger, and one of the children begins to communicate with the ghost of a little boy. Other paranormal events occur and it is clear that the house is haunted.
As the movie continues, more and more strange things happen, and it is revealed that Grace did something terrible with the children in the past, but it is unclear what it was. Just when the viewer thinks they know what’s going on, the whole plot is turned upside down and it turns out that Grace and the kids (as well as the help) had been dead the entire time. The “ghosts” in the house were the living, who had settled in the house long after Grace had killed herself and her children. It was the ghosts, who had terrorized the living all along.
2.Poltergeist
Poltergeist spends a lot of time making sure the viewer knows that the ghosts haunting the house are not only causing trouble, they are also malevolent and haunting the family. As each interaction with the poltergeists continues, the stakes rise higher and higher until Carol Anne is sucked into television, leaving a desperate family with few options to get their daughter back. Add to that the killer clown that still gives people nightmares, the corpses in the pool and the deadly tree, and the villains in Poltergeist are clearly the ghosts.
They just aren’t! As you progress through the movie, it becomes clear that ghosts are not evil spirits trying to destroy all life – well, most of them are not. Instead, they are the disturbed spirits of the people who were buried under the property. When the movie closes in the third act, Craig T. Nelson’s character grabs his boss and yells that they moved the tombstones, but they didn’t move the bodies! Ultimately, the living were the ones who caused all the trouble and if the dead had been treated with respect, none of the bad things that happened in the movie would have happened.
1.Carrie
Carrie is an interesting movie due to the complexity of the characters and how the title girl’s nature completely changes in the end. When the movie begins, the viewer meets Carrie and her crazy and fanatic mother, who barely manages to take care of her daughter. She is mercilessly teased at school, and when she has her first period while in the school locker room, she freaks out because her mother never explained her menstruation. This only makes the kids tease her more and her life is clearly not going well.
In the third act, Carrie is taken to the prom and is elated, but it doesn’t last long. When children prank her by throwing a bucket of pig’s blood on her, her latent psychokinetic abilities are activated. From there, the movie goes from Carrie as the victim to being the monster. Kill almost everyone at the prom, including teachers and school administrators. With this, the film changes from direct horror to reverse horror by redefining the main character from being the victim to also being the villain of the film.
