Not the character that most of us least suspected of being a serial killer/ demon/vampire/werewolf or whatever, but, literally, somebody not featured up to that point at all (except for the scary death scenes, but without his/her face being shown)? Like, at the very end, he/she is revealed, and it is the character that we haven’t seen before throughout the whole movie? Similar to the way the unsubs were usually revealed in early seasons of “Criminal Minds”?
It sounds like a terrible twist ending, sure, a cop out basically, but I’d be surprised if it turns out that nobody has pulled it off by now. It may even be a breath of fresh air. Most of the horror movie endings and villain reveals are cliches now, it is hard to come up with something original.
How about the end of Friday the 13th? Turns out the serial killer was the mom, whom you’ve not seen up to that point.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a TV Tropes entry that covers this phenomenon: Stranger Behind The Mask. The horror films The House on Sorority Row, Deep Red and *I Know What You Did Last Summer * are listed as examples.
Not a horror movie, exactly, but there is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow where the villain isn’t revealed until the very end.
It’s considered poor writing, the equivalent of a Deus ex machina. Unless you introduce the character beforehand, the audience will think it’s a cheat.
Would Cabin in the Woods count? The ancient gods come out at the very end to destroy the world.
Not on that list: the eccentric-sleuth-tries-to-find-a-serial-killer’s-pattern-to-stop-him flick The January Man, with Kevin Kline as said eccentric sleuth; said killer – wasn’t the guy played by Alan Rickman, or the guy played by Harvey Keitel, or the guy played by Danny Aiello, or the guy played by Rod Steiger; and so on.
Instead, it all pretty much comes to an end with a “Does anybody know this guy?” and a “Who he is ain’t important” and a “That’s the problem with him” and a “He’s nobody.”
Isn’t that also the film The Usual Suspects?
Would Black Christmas count?
How about Sleepaway Camp?
The Fly (1986) is for the most part hero turning into the villain until the very end where Stathis, the assumed villain, saves the day.
I was gonna mention that too.
A made-for-tv horror movie I saw when I was kid back in the 70’s (and haven’t it seen since) called “Crowhaven Farm” revealed a villain near the end. The Hope Lange character was trying to escape, and got picked up by her “friend”, who ended up only delivering her to the “bad guys”.
I’ll always remember the stone-faced line: “Get out of the car, Maggie.”
The January Man.
He’s unmasked and he’s nobody.
That was my first thought.
I know a guy who studies the Jack the Ripper case really seriously, and has published some articles on it. He says that at judgment day (he’s an atheist engaging in hyperbole), if someone says “OK, who was it? who was Jack?” some guy no one recognizes will raise his hand.
The January Man is making a point, and I think does it quite well. Not every crime film could take its tack, but I think in this case, it works.
SPOILER ALERT:
In Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, the actual criminal for whom the hero was mistaken is arrested at the end. He bears a slight resemblance to the hero, but not that much. He is a shlub we have never seen before.
There was an old “Golden Age” Superman story where, when the villain is unmasked at the end, he turned out to be no one we’ve ever seen before. The dialogue then goes something like this:
Superman: I’ve never seen you before
Villain: Of Course Not. That’s WHY I did it – I wanted to be KNOWN for something!
What about Se7en? Kevin Spacey is just some guy who shows up at the end before the final scene.
I believe The Bone Collector fits the OP’s category for the most part - the villain is revealed at the end to be someone you saw briefly at the start of the film, who has a preposterous motive and is frankly just a step to the left from “the butler did it”.
That’s what I was thinking, too. Great movie - great role.
From the TV show Bones, there’s Gormogon
He was not been given a name, and he has been described as “a nobody, an invisible man, angry at history for not seeing him”. The stunt performer — Laurence Todd Rosenthal — who played Gormogon went uncredited; the character had no spoken dialogue and appeared on screen only briefly.
The villain I refer to above later became known ( in the 1980s, when they revived him) as “Funnyface” (Funnyface (New Earth) | DC Database | Fandom )
He first appeared in Superman #19 (November 1942) in “The Case of the Funny Paper Crimes”
I read it in Superman #183, an “80 Page Giant” from 1966 reprinting some “Golden Age Stories”