10 Movies That Ought To Have A Villain But Don't

So if there's one thing that makes the plot of most movies chug along, it is the villain

the bad guy, the antagonist, the arch-nemesis, and every narrative feature has one. Or does it

These films certainly feel like they ought to have a villain, and we darned well remember

there being someone behind all the hurdles our heroes had to jump. But if we take another look

well, things aren't as good versus evil as they seem. I'm Gareth, this is What Culture

and here are movies that ought to have a villain, but don't. Funny Pages

Young Man vs. Society is given a grimy twist in Funny Pages

where teenager and aspiring comic artist Robert Blythner finds himself rebelling against the small world of New Jersey

A twisted coming-of-age story, the film doesn't feature a single likeable or forgivable character

except for Robert's art teacher, Mr. Catano, who dies suddenly in the opening scene

Perhaps, then, this is the cipher for the entire movie, as good characters don't have a place in a world that is unfriendly, unforgiving, and surprisingly real at the same time

Robert abandons his family home and finds himself a dank basement apartment in one of New Jersey's roughest areas

sharing with two older men who live in filth and know no boundaries in terms of normality or sexuality

while he simultaneously enters the orbit of a whole cavalcade of weirdos, no-hopers, and casually sinister characters

But despite the fact that so many of these characters definitely have the makings of an antagonist

nobody really commits to the bit. Robert comes out the other side of the film as much the brat as he went in

and though he is a product of his society, the only person to blame for his behaviour is, well, himself

No outright villains anywhere, though. Knock at the Cabin Knock at the Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan's return to form brings four seemingly suicidal strangers

into a gay couple's holiday home, armed with homemade weapons and apparently representing

the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Yet, despite their sinister bearing, and the fact that they

physically compel the family to stay put, the four strangers profess to have no intention of

causing their captives harm. Yeah, right, right? Well, turns out they're actually telling the truth

as over the course of 100 nail-biting minutes, the only persons the horsemen harm are themselves

ritualistically sacrificing their troop as the clocks count down to an impending apocalypse

They posit that if the family sacrifice one of their own, the end of the world will be avoided

No pressure. While we would expect to take this line with 10 pinches of salt, it is borne out in the film's conclusion

when the sacrifice of dedicated co-dad Eric by his loving partner Andrew

does indeed put a stopper in an Armageddon that has planes falling from the sky, and mega tsunamis

chomping off great chunks of coastline. The four horsemen are the good guys, and the sweet family

are the good guys, and God, or whoever sent the horsemen their visions, is probably a good guy

So blame the weather I guess or I don know Cocoon Not all films about aliens living among us have to be body snatchers or they live Sometimes they can just be a band of good willing to share their immortality with the local old folk

Indeed, although Cocoon has been lost among its harder-edged contemporaries, the Ron Howard-directed feature won several Academy Awards in its time

and features a surprisingly uplifting portrayal of our outer space visitors compared to many of its stablemates

The film sees the residents of a Florida nursing home uncover a fountain of youth in their backyard

which allows them to not just mend their aching bones, but relive some of their glory days

Sounds like a blast. No surprises that the supposed fountain is the result of alien intervention then

Little do the old folks know, extraterrestrials known as Anterians have been using the swimming pool next door to store their cocoons

and their effluent has been providing everyone that rosy boost. Despite this impending collision course being fertile ground for an interplanetary war

the old folks wind up making a pact with the Anterians to travel with them back to

you guessed it, Anteria, and live forever in peace. American Fiction Called Jefferson's directorial debut, American Fiction, has its flaws

not least a weird Wizard of Oz-like ending in which the main conflicts don't so much get resolved

as swept off the narrative plane in one fell swoop. Nonetheless, it is a scathing satire against the contemporary literary scene

which prizes identity far above the writing itself. Tenured professor and published literary author Monk

struggles against a world which only wants to see his blackness on the page

and despite being up against a slurry of white folks who fetishise the colour of his skin

and their misconceptions of what his genuine experience may be, none of them qualify as an authentic villain

Bearing in mind, this is a film that begins when its protagonist embarks on a tour de fraudulence

under the guise of an ex-er on the run from the law, and ends when the FBI bust into an awards ceremony, guns blazing

There really ought to be a clear antagonist here, but there just isn't. What there is, is an entire establishment shored up in office blocks around the globe

and hell-bent on raking in cash from poverty porn. And you can't exactly throw that down a Death Star shaft, can you

Bodies, bodies, bodies. The precise intersection between West Coast millennial and Gen Z culture

Alina Reigns' influencer horror Bodies Bodies Bodies takes some major faces from the social media generation

Rachel Sennett and Pete Davidson included, and turns them loose on a Mansion in the Woods movie that redefines its genre and tropes

The premise is familiar enough. A group of 20-somethings hole up in a remote building

cut off from mainstream society by great distances, bad weather, and lack of cellular reception

Then when a hide-and-seek-style party game has one of their group turn up dead

the fake friends turn on each other while trying to save themselves from whoever done it

As the bodies, bodies, bodies pile high, high, high, and the guest numbers whittle down

it seems impossible that one of them is not the killer pulling the strings. Well spoiler alert the big twist of bodies is that there is no villain at all The entire film is just a bunch of privileged loudmouths arguing themselves to death stumbling into mishap after mishap with unintentionally fatal consequences

But who could have seen that come in? AI Artificial Intelligence Few films feel as dark or hopeless as Steven Spielberg's AI Artificial Intelligence

In the film, we follow android boy, child David on his harrowing and unrelenting journey

from the cradle to the grave. Across thousands of years, he encounters the worst of humanity along the way

who want to exploit him and harm him and can't find it in themselves to love him the way he does them

Break your damn heart. He journeys past the end of humanity and the end of the Earth as we know it

into the time of advanced AI lifeforms, looking and hoping for the happy ending he deserves

But in the face of all the cruelties and injustices David witnesses

and which we must witness being thrust upon him, There is no overarching schemer, no malicious villain pulling the strings

We might want to blame his creator Professor Hobby, but he's just a man. An inventor trying to bring the next line of his product to life, so to speak

No, there's just no bad guy here, is there? In the end, there are only humans and their emotional, financial, and existential avarice

The Banshees of Inner Shiren Another master collaboration between writer-director Martin McDonagh and his stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson

tragic comedy The Banshees of Inner Sheeran dramatises the follies of the Irish civil

conflicts in microcosm. On the remote island of Inner Sheeran, literally translated as the

Island of Ireland, Podrick hits the pub one day to find his best friend Colm has abruptly put an

end to their lifelong friendship, and wants nothing more to do with him. The film charts

Podrick's misbegotten attempts to repair this friendship, which gradually grows to enmity with

each of his bungled attempts, resulting in a dead pet for Padraic, self-amputated fingers for Colum

and a previously peaceful island community in turmoil. Yeah, despite the severity of this enmity

Colum never becomes a villain. He is stubborn, hard-headed, and resolved not to change his mind

no matter what his ex-friend does, but always taxed to the part of misunderstood co-protagonist

The absence of a genuine villain, a person unto whom we can attribute our feelings of hurt and

blame, is felt all the more potently in a film that has multi-digit amputations, donkey manslaughter

and a young man's suicide. Enter the Void With Enter the Void, Gaspar Noé guides us on a DMT trip to the other side

when drug dealer Oscar is shot in the head in the first act, and his soul takes a wild ride

through past and present. This begins a twisty, personal narrative offset against a backdrop of

psychedelic visuals that dip in and out throughout, channeling, modernizing, and redefining the iconic

Stargate sequence from the director's favourite movie, 2001 A Space Odyssey, paying homage while

doing something postmodern and new. Tokyo itself provides fertile imagery for the film's visual

eccentricities the neon and claustrophobia of the metropolis shaping Oscar physical and post journeys and offering some pretty grimy and miserable corners in which to unfold a tragic narrative

Botched deals, drug rings, abortions, and car crashes, there is not much No Way won't

throw at us. But while the director's irreversible and climax have several bad actors at their core

pushing the drama along against their protagonist's wills, Enter the Void lacks that evil figure

to coalesce around. Like the Greek tragedies, the miseries throughout Oscar and his sister

Linda's lives are mostly the product of luck, chance, fate, and their own character flaws

But all's well that ends well, eh? And Enter the Void definitely concludes with a happy ending

Corner Office A recent movie that has neither had the love nor exposure it definitely deserves

Joachim Bach's Corner Office remains something of a hidden gem for those of us who still enjoy

White Collar Malaise. Our story is a chapter in the life of pencil pusher Orson, beginning with

the commencement of his latest job in a thoroughly grey office, and ending with his firing. After a

slow burn-in and a few misunderstandings between himself and his co-workers, Orson discovers a

lush, spacious and private office with 1970s decor, and all the mod cons any self-respecting

office worker could ever need. This becomes Orson's go-to place to escape his colleagues

and get some serious work done. The dream. There's only one problem

The office is not an office, but a mental state produced by a mind fractured on years of tedium

And when Orson goes there, he's actually just standing katonic in the corridor

staring at the wall. A truly kafkan absurdist drama. The enemy of corner office is not any one person

but the limits and constraints of bureaucracy in society. And despite doing everything that they can

to keep Orson from his happy place corner office, His colleagues are just run-of-the-mill office workers, trying to get on with their day without having to deal with whatever strangeness the big guy brings to the mix

Bo is Afraid After the one-two punch of hereditary and Midsommar, the last thing anyone expected director Ari Aster to do was put together a modern-day tragicommie horror retelling of Homer's Greek epic poem The Odyssey

Eponymous protagonist Bo has every reason to be afraid. Living in the most hostile world of all, in which his neighbours blame him for noise that he didn't make, suburbanites blame him for how bad they messed up their own child, his mother blames him for not loving her enough, and society seems to blame him merely for being alive

He suffers physically, mentally, and emotional from the film's first scene to its last

But who does he have to blame for it all? Bo's journey is bloody, gory, grim, and difficult to watch, and yet lacks a clear and discernible villain

While the Odyssey has Poseidon as its arch-antagonist, pulling the strings of fate in an attempt

to waylay Odysseus on his journey home, Bo is afraid exists in a world without gods and

existential meaning-makers. Thus, there is no architect of Bo's trials or destiny

He has been adrift most of his life from family, friends, community, society, and these are

merely the closing days of a fated yet inconsequential life