It’s a point raised in the movie. There were no people in the buildings because the bombings were done at night and the only people that would be in the buildings were a part of the group and knew to be out of them.
The Usual Suspects is the first one that comes to mind that isn’t horror and the villain winning by getting away. Does that fit the ‘evil wins’ concept you are looking for?
Mr Pink walked away with the diamonds before the police arrived. It’s not clear if he was caught or not but he did walk away. youtu.be/0GQc_SwSp_U?si=1XjXFxckgrvR_6EV
I'm assuming that it's been taken as read that this post will be full of spoilers.
Fallen (1998). IMDB doesn't include 'horror' in the genre list, but it's got supernatural elements to it, I suppose.
The Vanishing (1988) aka Spoorloos. Not the American remake, obvs.
Fallen. Denzel sets a very neat trap for the demon… but not neat enough.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog as well. While the Doc may have been mostly noble and Hammer mostly awful, it ends (somewhat ambiguously) with the Doc actually turning into a villain.
I guess my mind automatically excluded it because of the demon aspect being somewhat horror related (though it’s a completely mild movie in terms of graphic violence) but it definitely deserves to be on this list. Partner watched it for the first time few months back and loved it (they hate horror and generally prefer family genre), just a generally great movie that keeps you intrigued and was a great change from stream-binging style entertainment.
I am going to put in little shop of horrors since it is a musical. And I really would not consider it horror.
For those of you that don’t know there are actually 2 versions of this movie. The original release version where the plants lose and the ORIGINAL test audience version where the plants win.
Globo Gym wins in the original version of Dodgeball, but the test audiences hated it so they added the blindfolded stand-off. I’m mostly happy they changed it, but that original ending would have been so ballsy. Also would make the subtitle better, since most “true” underdogs do lose.
The director insists the alien plants winning was the original ending he wanted, but he was forced to give the film a happy ending at the last minute. The director’s cut gives you the original ending in all it’s evil glory.
There’s also an original Little Shop of Horrors released in 1960 that stars a young Jack Nicholson. That film has a different ending than both endings of the 1986 remake.
Many people do, but the whole point of the movie was that the prosecution didn’t go far enough to stop the original perpetrators. The whole point of the ending was that the entire law enforcement system came together to try to determine what it would take to stop one person, and when he tried to stop that he signed his own death warrant.
I’d argue that the whole damn system was either corrupt or broken beyond repair. The fact that they “won” in the end and got to simply go on with their lives is pretty much evil winning out.
It would also have been a much more interesting story if they let Clyde win or escalated the havoc he unleashed even further. But it seems they ran out of ideas and or budget by the time they started wrapping up the final act. So that’s a second time evil wins again.
The reason why I think it wins is it becomes obvious Satan can have do-overs and he's already falling for one of them. He hasn't actually escaped, and Satan is still having fun at his expense.
If I recall it’s only like 10 minutes and either no dialog or in French. But it’s easy to get the gist of it and worth a watch. And it unlocked the thought experiment about someone witnessing their own death through time travel that Terry Gilliam expertly ran with.