20 Final Girls Who Were The Villain All Along

Saw is known as a visceral, gut-churning franchise that doesn't hold back when making audiences squirm. The franchise's second installment holds true to its predecessor by offering more heave-inducing scenes and characters who aren't who they appear to be. 

As shocking as it was to see Jigsaw's true identity unveiled in the first film, John Kramer wisely spared himself any actual suffering. The same can't be said of Amanda, a recovering drug addict who initially appears to be a victim trapped in Jigsaw's torturous games. It's hard not to feel for Amanda after she's thrown into the needle pit and stabbed by thousands of used syringes, but any goodwill is quickly lost when she comes out as Jigsaw's apprentice. 

Having already survived Jigsaw's infamous reverse bear trap in Saw, Amanda devoted her life to Kramer's mission. She was in on the game and trapped the detective trying to shut everything down, securing herself as Jigsaw's successor. 

By the time Scream 4 takes place, Sidney Prescott has come to terms with her past and transformed her harrowing experience with Ghostface into a successful career writing self-help books. Her new life comes to a deadly halt when a book tour finds her back in Woodsboro and framed for the murder of two teenagers. In clearing her name, Prescott once again finds herself facing off with Ghostface while protecting her cousin Jill and her friends. 

Of course, a franchise like Scream could never do something as simple as handing off the baton to a new final girl. Instead, it takes the person poised to take Prescott's place and turns her into a villain. Fueled by jealousy, Jill manipulates a new boyfriend into a murder spree so she can be the famed sole survivor. Her plan backfires when she's shot and killed, once again putting Sidney in the spotlight. 

Jordan Peele has an innate ability to subvert established horror tropes with twists that usually leave audiences reeling. So, it's no surprise that he created a final girl that perfectly straddles the line between perpetrator and victim.

Calling Adelaide an outright villain isn't exactly fair. On one hand, she's a mother desperately fighting a group of twisted doppelgangers set on killing her family. On the other, it's revealed she is a doppelganger and helped kidnap and replace the original Adelaide ("Red") when she was a child. While the new version of Adelaide doesn't remember leaving Red to be slowly tortured and lose her mind, it doesn't change the fact that she stole someone's life and left them to rot. So when Red returns for revenge, it's hard not to feel that some of her pent-up anger and rage is justified.

Adelaide manages to save her children by killing Red, but it's difficult to see her as a hero knowing the horrible things she has done.

Unfriended is all about unconventional storytelling. Filmed entirely on Blaire's computer screen, she begins the movie by watching a video of her childhood best friend, Laura, killing herself. A year has passed since Laura took her own life after an embarrassing video of her went viral, and her ghost returns for vengeance during a group chat on Skype.  

Laura makes Blaire and her friends expose dark secrets about themselves, and if they don't comply, they die. While it turns out everyone in the group is a fairly awful human being, it's Blaire who's harboring the most deadly secret. Not only did she film the embarrassing video, but she's also the one who uploaded it. After multiple attempts at misdirection lead to the death of her friends, Blaire finally apologizes, but it's too late. Her friends pay the ultimate price for her refusing to take responsibility, and the movie ends with Laura attacking Blaire. 

Universally (and unjustly) panned as a Scream ripoff, Urban Legend does its own take on a meta-slasher. Instead of being obsessed with horror movies, the winter coat-clad killer is obsessed with urban legends, murdering sassy college students by recreating scary children’s tales.

As the killer creatively kills off Brenda and Natalie’s friends, their motives slowly come to light, positioning both women as key players in the murder spree. Natalie eventually confesses to participating in her own version of an urban legend, accidentally hitting a man with her car and not stopping to see if he survived. The admission leads Brenda to reveal herself as the killer, targeting the people who hit her fiancé and left him on the road to die.  

Horror has always loved a good old-fashioned fake-out: the killer comes back, the protagonist has been dead the entire time, and sometimes, the final girl is in on the plan all along. 

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane begins with all the hallmarks of a classic slasher. Emmet seeks revenge by mercilessly killing the classmates who bullied him in increasingly grotesque and brutal ways. While it initially appears that Mandy - Emmet's ex-best friend turned popular girl - is on the chopping block when he starts picking everyone off during a party, she quickly shows her nature by thrusting a knife into a friend who runs to her for comfort and safety. Not only is Mandy in on the plot to kill everyone, she also turns on Emmet, killing him to secure her status as an innocent victim.