Switching Sides: 5 Movies With Heroes Turning Out to Be Villains

Getting a glimpse of the villain's point of view in the movie can make the story much more interesting and add a whole new layer to it, making the audience wonder if maybe the bad guy wasn't so bad after all.

But an even greater effect can be achieved when your expectations are subverted, and the hero you have been rooting for throughout the movie, or the better half of the film, is actually not the good guy, turning everything upside down.

So here are five movies where the protagonist turns out to be the story's villain.
Beware of major spoilers ahead.

Memento (2000)

Leonard Shelby, portrayed by Guy Pearce, suffers from short-term memory loss, presumably due to a trauma he suffered the night his wife was murdered by a burglar.

Now obsessed with finding the man responsible for the tragedy in order to get his revenge, Leonard leaves himself notes and clues, even tattooing the most important ones on his own body, in order to remember everything after each bout of amnesia.

But as the story progresses and the viewer connects the events of the past and the future, it is revealed that Leonard's wife actually survived that night and later killed herself, unable to come to terms with his condition, so Leonard lies to himself and simply kills everyone who has wronged him, only to forget about it the next day.

I Am Legend (2008)

Though this movie butchered a number of important plot points from the original novel of the same name by Richard Matheson, it still kept the general idea of the original's finale, with Will Smith 's Dr. Robert Neville turning out to be a true monster of the story.

Throughout the movie, he and the audience are sure that the vampire mutants that populate the world after a deadly pandemic wipes out most of humanity are nothing more than horrible animalistic savages.

However, it turns out that they still possess some intelligence, and Neville has been a terrible boogeyman to them, hunting, capturing and experimenting on innocent members of a new species populating Earth.

Fight Club (1999)

Based on the equally influential novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, this iconic movie technically has a protagonist and an antagonist, but since they both occupy the same body, Fight Club has earned its rightful place on our list.

The story follows Narrator, portrayed by Edward Norton, whose life is turned upside down after he meets the mysterious Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, who has some pretty radical views on society.

In a bizarre turn of events, it is revealed that Tyler is just another personality of the Narrator and that he, along with many accomplices he has acquired throughout the movie, is planning an actual terrorist attack.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

This comedy-horror begins in a rather clichéd way, with teenagers going to a party in a remote mansion.

After one of them is found dead next to a bloody kukri sword, they realize that one of them must be the murderer and turn on each other, which only leads to more chaos.

But in a hilariously dark twist, the first victim is revealed to have accidentally killed himself while trying to open a bottle with the sword, leaving the survivors to realize that they are solely responsible for all the other deaths in the movie.

Enemy (2013)

This psychological thriller, directed by Denis Villeneuve and featuring an outstanding dual performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, is incredibly complicated and doesn't provide any definitive answers to what you've just witnessed, but it still fits the theme of our list.

After college professor Adam Bell becomes increasingly obsessed with his own doppelganger, actor Anthony Claire, things soon take a dark turn as it turns out that both are not the greatest of people and may even be the same person.