Better Watch Out Has One of the Most Shocking Villain Reveals in a Horror Movie

 

Credit to Better Watch Out | Rotten Tomatoes

I had seen Better Watch Out years ago, and I remember that my jaw literally dropped with the sudden villain reveal. You know that old saying, where it’s like someone had pulled the carpet from beneath my feet, leaving you in absolute shock? That is how this movie made me feel.

This is your typical invasion horror film where the baby sister and the kids she is looking after, find themselves now getting ready to fight to the death against an intruder during the holidays. 

However, the villain in this movie is not who you expect. 

As Ashley and Luke both realize that there is no escape, they accept their fates, each of them telling the other they are going to miss one another. They hide in a closet from the mystery intruder, but then Ashley finds out that this invader is Luke’s best friend. She gets understandably upset, telling Luke that this prank was very messed up. Luke’s crush on Ashley led to this idea, and he believed that she would start to view him as her knight in armor if he tried to ‘save’ her. 

Ashley threatens to tell his parents, and in a panic, he knocks her out, with the help of his best friend. 

The real Luke is revealed in the second half of the film, and he is secretly a sociopathic serial killer. 

Credit to Better Watch Out (2016) — Matthew Puddister

This reveal was so insane to me, because of how well-hidden Luke kept this persona from his own family. He obsession with Ashley leads to Luke showing his real side to her, and he murders people in front of her, showing off his monstrous side. He even goes as far to kill his best friend, who tries to save Ashley from Luke. 

Watching Luke snap at his best friend after shooting him was so terrifying, because how fast he quickly gets over his death. He expresses pure sadness after killing him, and then suddenly looks like he was slightly annoyed after the murder. The actor that played Luke did a phenomenal job, and he is the first kid in a horror movie to scare the crap out of me like this. 

Toward the end of the movie, Luke and Ashley have a scary conservation. He asks Ashley why his mother stopped holding him, and she tells Luke that she knows why she stopped, implying his monstrous side was the reason for that. He coldheartedly kills Ashley, stabbing her in the neck. He then stages the crime scene, making it look like another person had murdered everyone, leaving only Luke the sole survivor. 

Just when you think this movie is going to have an ending that will piss you off, Luke learns that Ashley did indeed survive. She had placed duct tape on her wound secretly without Luke knowing, and as she is being carted off on an ambulance, she flips off Luke, who looks super pissed off. 

The movie ends with Luke’s mother holding him, happy that he is alive, and he watches Ashley leave, pure anger on his face. 

It’s so scary to think that Luke could have actually gotten away with his crimes. He is so good at pretending to be a normal kid, who the hell is going to suspect that a kid committed so many murders in one night? If it hadn’t been for Ashley’s determination to survive, he would have won. 

Perhaps he would have embraced his serial killer persona later in life, and who knows how deadly he would have been like in the future? 

It’s a shame that we never got a sequel to the movie. Even though Ashley’s fate is up in the air, the ending left behind a lot of possibilities of the story to go in any direction. 

I still wonder what the sequel could have been like, Luke’s character is so freaking scary!