More often than not,theprotagonistof a filmis typically the “winner” of that story. Most movies, and indeed most stories in general, see the main character achieving some sort of victory by the end. Whether the protagonist goes through trials and tribulations to achieve their goal or if it just works out in their favor, they usually succeed or come out on top by the time the credits roll.
Audiences rarely get to see the main character lose. Even in instanceswhere the protagonist is the villainor becomes morally corrupt, we see them win more often than lose, even if “winning” involves them failing at a goal, but learning something or becoming a better person along the way.
Even more rare than seeing the main character lose is when the main character loses even though they have done everything right. A protagonist might approach their circumstances the best way they can and do nothing wrong, leaving audiences devastated when it doesn’t work out for them. But it’s also realistic — sometimes life is like that, too. This tragic circumstance is perhaps best summarized inStar Trek: The Next Generationby Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
The horror genre excels at exploring this situation. After all, the idea of a protagonist doing nothing wrong and still losing can be quite a horrific ending. But films in other genres have done it too. Here are 10 movies where the main character does everything right, but still loses.
Article contains major spoilers
10Don’t Look Up (2021)
Don’t Look Up
Directed by Adam McKay,Don’t Look Upis a sci-fi dramedy that follows two low-level astronomers who discover an approaching comet that will destroy Earth. To warn the world’s population about the planet-destroying comet hurdling towards them,the two scientistsgo on a giant media tour. However, no one seems to take them seriously, not even the President of the United States.
Related:9 Movies Where the Villain Wins
Why Randall and Kate Lose
The way that astronomers Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence) are treated when they try to get the world to focus on one extremely important issue (the comet being a stand-in for climate change) is unfortunately reminiscent of the way society consumes news and the media.
Every time a celebrity did something or there was a new viral trend, it knocked the approaching comet out of the news cycle, leaving the astronomers searching for ways to get the attention back on them. Kate and Randall try everything they can to get society to focus on the one thing that could actually wipe out the planet, but at the end of the day, our short attention span wins out and humanity is unable to be saved.
Stream Don’t Look Up on Netflix
9Would You Rather (2012)
Starring ’80s sci-fi horror icon Jeffery Combs and modern-day scream queen Brittany Snow,Would You Ratheris a horror thriller that follows a young woman named Iris (Snow). Desperate to help her ailing brother, Iris accepts an invitation to a dinner party hosted by an aristocrat where the winner of the evening’s games will go home with a cash prize. Unbeknownst to Iris, the games will be deadly for the participants.
Why Iris Loses
After realizing that the games are sadistic and there’s no way out of the house on her own, she unwillingly participates in the games to the best of her ability. While some of the attendees forgo their humanity to win the money and make it out alive, Iris still clings to her humanity and tries her best not to hurt anyone else. She does things that will haunt her for the rest of her life but uses her wits to try to outsmart the leader of the games.
Iris ends up being the sole winner, but she loses part of herself in the process. Her true loss comes at the end, however, when she finally returns home after the hellish night. She discovers that her sick brother took his own life while she was gone, and all the horrible things she endured the night before were for nothing.
Stream Would You Rather on Hulu
Night of the Living Dead
George A. Romero’sNight of the Living Deadisn’t justa zombie classic, it’s a horror classicthat has shaped the genre for decades. The film follows a group of unlikely Pennsylvania residents who hide in a remote countryside house after the dead start rising from their graves.
They are led by Ben (Duane Jones), who boards up the windows and doors, and tries to help the six other people in the house survive the night, even as their likelihood of survival deteriorates by the minute.
Why Ben Loses
Ben does everything right from start to finish. He boards up all entrances and exits in the house, relentlessly tries to keep everyone calm, and he even tries to figure out ways to defeat the zombies without leaving the house. He is a true leader who makes the survival of everyone his top priority.
Ben ends up making it through the night despite push-back from one of the other survivors, and the hordes of zombies that surrounded the property. Despite doing everything right, Ben still meets a tragic fate the next morning.
What makes this loss so terrible is that he survived the zombie attack, but died at the hands of other humans, who assumed he was one of the walking dead. It’s also a biting social commentary that Ben dies this way, as he is a Black man, and Romero was known for addressing social issues in his films.
Stream Night of the Living Dead on Peacock
7They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
They Cloned Tyrone
The Netflix filmThey Cloned Tyroneis one of 2023’s most underrated movies. The sci-fi dark comedy follows a man named Fontaine (John Boyega) who is shot dead by a rival drug dealer and is shocked to wake up the next morning in his bed.
When his friends Slick (Jamie Foxx) and Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) start discovering eerie instances as well, the trio bands together to figure out what’s going on, and discover an underground government lab where experiments and cloning are being conducted on the Black population.
Why Fontaine Loses
After discovering what the American government is doing in their town, Fontaine and his friends make it their mission to infiltrate the lab and shut down the experiments. They figure out how the government is controlling the residents of their town and how to stop it, then destroy the lab and free the people trapped inside.
When the news spreads, Fontaine and his friends realize this has been happening in towns across the country. Not only that, but Fontaine sees a replica of himself in another town, and it is discovered that the same clones are being made everywhere, and there’s no way of knowing who is a real person. Though they stopped one operation, Fontaine doesn’t know, and may never know, if he is real or just another clone.
Stream They Cloned Tyrone on Netflix
6You’re Next (2011)
You’re Next
The horror-comedyYou’re Nexttakes place in the remote hillside mansion of Aubrey and Paul Davidson (Barbara Crampton, Rob Moran), who are planning on hosting an anniversary dinner party with their adult children in an attempt to mend broken family ties. When the family falls under attack by masked assailants, their son Crispian’s (AJ Bowen) girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vinson), takes charge and shows the attackers that she has an uncanny ability to fight back.
Why Erin Loses
Erin has an unbelievable instinct when it comes to defending herself and the family. She continuously outsmarts the attackers and bests them in physical fights. Erin takes them down one by one, anticipating their moves and using them against the assailants.
Erin eventually learns their true identities and the reason behind the unprovoked attack. Even when she defeats the attackers and is the last one standing, her skills and intelligence wind up being useless in the end. Just as she has killed the last of the assailants, the police arrive and mistake her as one of the criminals, shooting her. She survives, but in the end credits, it’s revealed that she is the prime suspect for the events of the night.
Rent You’re Next on Prime Video
5Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
infinity war
In the second to last installment of the Avengers' story,Avengers: Infinity War, the group of heroes face off against their biggest threat yet. With Thanos' plan to secureall six Infinity Stonesalmost complete, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have one last chance to take the stones back and stop Thanos from erasing half of all life from the galaxy. The fate of existence weighs on their shoulders.
Why the Avengers Lose
In most MCU movies, like most superhero movies, the heroes come out on top at the end. Even when they make sacrifices along the way, we almost always see the superheroes defeat their villains.Avengers: Infinity Waris one of the rare instances in which the heroes are defeated (though by the sequelEndgame, the heroes are indeed triumphant).
The Avengers do everything in their power to stop Thanos, including traveling into space and forming allies with other superheroes. For once, the Avengers put aside their differences and trust each other completely. Still, when they have Thanos within reach, it is not enough for them to stop him. He snaps his fingers wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, and even though the heroes did everything right, Thanos effectively wipes out half of all life from existence.
Stream Avengers: Infinity War on Disney+
4The Hunt (2012)
Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterburg’sThe Huntis a drama focused on the life of a lonely teacher named Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), who is fighting for custody of his son. His life slowly starts to get better when he begins a new relationship and receives good news from his son, but his luck is about to be shattered when a lie conceived by one of his students wrecks his life.
Why Lucas Loses
Lucas' young student Klara (Annika Wedderkop) develops feelings for him, and when Lucas politely explains that it is inappropriate for a child to act on those feelings with an adult, little Klara lies about what really happened because she was hurt.
That one lie turns the entire town against him, causing him to be the town’s outcast. The local grocery store won’t even let him shop there. He is savagely beaten by people he once called his friends. When Klara finally admits the truth, he is slowly able to pick up the pieces of his life once again. Nevertheless, certain townspeople are still uneasy around him, and one of them even attempts to kill him.
Stream The Hunt on Tubi
3Se7en (1995)
David Fincher’s crime thrillerSe7enfollows two homicide detectives, rookie Mills (Brad Pitt) and veteran Somerset (Morgan Freeman), as they relentlessly try to track down a sadistic serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world’s ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. Using each of the sins as the motive for each of his murders, John Doe (Kevin Spacey) sermonizes to the detectives as he lures them from the tortured remains of one victim to the next.
Why Detectives Mills and Somerset Lose
The detectives follow this case closely and precisely throughout the entire movie. Despite their different methods of approaching a case as intricate as this, they end up working well together to catch their killer. They follow the clues and piece together his motive, and eventually have the opportunity to catch him and serve him the punishment he deserves.
But when Doe reveals the final stages of his plan, which sends Detective Mills over the edge. When the three of them arrive in the desert, Mills receives a disturbing package, which Somerset opens. Upon realizing his pregant wife’s head is inside the box, the devastated detective unknowingly completes the final part of Doe’s master plan — fulfilling the Sin of Wrath, and killing Doe in cold blood. Detective Somerset closes out the thematic ending with narration:
“Ernest Hemingway once wrote: ‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”
Stream Se7en on Max
2Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky’s hallucinogenic dramaRequiem for a Dreamfollows the troubled lives of four Coney Island residents. There’s Sara (Ellen Burstyn), a retired widow whose dream is to be on a specific reality TV show, and her son Harry (Jared Leto), who is a heroin addict, but has goals he wants to achieve with his best friend and fellow addict Tyrone (Marlon Wayans).
Lastly, there is Harry’s girlfriend, Marion, who could be a fashion designer or artist, but is swept up in Harry’s drug-centric world. Eventually, even his mother is bogged down by a bad drug habit.
Why the Coney Island Foursome Loses
Despite their best intentions to improve their lives, all four main characters succumb to addiction. Harry tries to be better in the only ways he knows how, but he falls prey to his addiction in the end, as does Tyrone.
Sara had become so convinced by her own delusions that she could be on her favorite reality show if she just lost weight that she became addicted, effectively destroying the remaining shreds of her mental state. Marion, the one with the most potential, inevitably becomes wrapped up in the world of drugs as a direct result of her relationship with Harry and winds up humiliating herself for more heroin.
The film is known as one of the more horrific andbrutally realistic moviesabout drug addiction and the devastating effects it has on the lives of not just addicts, but everyone around them, too.
Stream Requiem for a Dream on Tubi
1The Mist (2007)
Stephen King’s The Mist
Based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name,The Misttakes place in a small town in Maine after a major storm sweeps the area. In its wake, the storm leaves a mysterious fog-like mist behind that seems to harbor something dangerous.
When David Drayton (Thomas Jane) takes his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and their neighbor Brent (Andre Braugher) into town to get supplies, they find themselves trapped with other locals in a grocery store and realize that the mist is home to terrifying, deadly creatures.
Related:10 Movies Where the Main Characters Must Make an Impossible Choice
Why David Loses
Once he realizes that leaving the grocery store and going into the mist is not a viable option, David quickly starts thinking about how to keep his son safe and make the store a new home base for everyone stuck there. He essentially becomes the leader of the group, as he repeatedly tries to keep everyone safe and sane in their new reality.
David mostly succeeds at this, and is eventually able to escort his son and a few others through the mist and to his truck. When he and the other three adults realize there is no escape from the mist, they decide to end their lives rather than die by the monsters. After helping the rest of them commit suicide, David steps out of the car to be taken by the creatures. However, as he does this, the mist dissipates, and herealizes they were moments away from rescue.
