Top 10 Movie Characters Who Were Crazy All Along
#10: David Callaway/Charlie
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“Hide and Seek” (2005)
What starts out as a supernatural thriller soon takes a heart-wrenchingly sad twist when a widower, David Callaway, realizes that the imaginary friend his daughter swears is responsible for committing a murder is a very real man. Is David’s young daughter committing murders or is there a supernatural presence in their lives? Actually, the answer is much sadder. Charlie is really the alternate personality of David himself. Suffering from dissociative identity disorder, David murdered his wife, which led to his psyche creating a separate, more violent personality for him to act out with violence. It turns the entire mystery of the movie on its head and sets the stage for a heartbreaking climax.
#9: Walter Sparrow/Detective Fingerling
“The Number 23” (2007)
Jim Carrey once again stretched his dramatic chops with this paranoid psychological thriller. Slipping between his real life and the fictional world of the detective story he’s reading, his character, Walter Sparrow, becomes increasingly convinced of a massive conspiracy involving the number 23. Eventually, it is revealed that Walter is the book’s author, and his psychosis is a trauma response to a murder he committed in his past. By putting the audience in his point-of-view, the movie makes us experience this altered reality as Walter experiences it, and when the truth comes out, it’s as shattering to us as it is to him.
#8: Mort Rainey
“Secret Window” (2004)
When a movie is based on a Stephen King story, you’re always in for a terrifying treat. “Secret Window” follows Mort Rainey, a writer terrorized by a man called John Shooter, who insists Rainey plagiarized his short story. As the world closes in on Rainey, it becomes clear that the menacing man is actually a figment of his imagination. Their conflict about the ending of Mort’s short story is actually one Mort is having with himself about whether to avenge his estranged wife’s infidelity with his friend. Fully inhabiting the John Shooter persona, Mort ends up going with Shooter’s preferred ending: he kills his wife and her lover.
#7: Marie
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“High Tension” (2003)
This wildly controversial French horror slasher involves Marie and her friend Alex being terrorized by a serial killer. Marie watches as her friend’s family is murdered and Alex is kidnapped. What starts out as a gory and sadistic experiment in suspense turns completely on its head when the cops watch CCTV footage of one of the killings and see that our POV character is the culprit. The man Marie saw commit the killings was an invention of her imagination. Although it’s a killer twist, it does beg the question as to what was actually happening when Marie was killing the imaginary killer or following him in her car. But it’s effective, making us go back over the entire movie for clues.
#6: Francis
“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920)
Considered by renowned critic Roger Ebert as the first true horror film, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” may have invented the cinematic version of the unreliable narrator. The entire movie is told through the point of view of a man named Francis, whose story about a homicidal sleepwalker and his carnie handler is later revealed to be a figment of his imagination. The characters we’ve come to know are actually versions of the people who live in an asylum with him, including his own doctor. Whether the story is true or not is up to interpretation, but the movie’s German Expressionist design already does so much to disorient the audience that it’s hard to tell for sure.
#5: Edward “Teddy” Daniels/Andrew Laeddis
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“Shutter Island” (2010)
Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese stepped away from the crime genre to make this Dennis Lehane adaptation. DiCaprio plays Detective Teddy Daniels, who arrives at a secluded mental health facility to investigate a patient’s disappearance. But all is not as it seems. It turns out that Teddy is really a patient himself. The events of the story are revealed to be fake. Every bit of intrigue and paranoia has been an elaborate ruse put on by the medical staff to cure him of his delusions. As shocked as we were, it’s pretty needless to say Teddy is devastated by this revelation. Unable to cope with his guilt, Andrew reverts to his Teddy persona, and it is implied that he will be lobotomized.
#4: Leonard Shelby
“Memento” (2000)
In this acclaimed Christopher Nolan thriller, Guy Pearce is Leonard Shelby, a man suffering from amnesia. The plot unfurls itself in reverse, with Leonard having to piece together the events that lead up to him murdering the man responsible for his own wife’s murder. But, as always, there’s more to this than meets the eye. Leonard has avenged his wife’s attack before. He’s actually being manipulated by a cop into murdering several men under the delusion that they attacked his wife. Although Leonard appears determined to break the cycle at the end, the movie leaves this ambiguous.
#3: Patrick Bateman
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“American Psycho” (2000)
Where most characters on this list have tried to forget all the violence they’ve done, Wall Street investment banker Patrick Bateman spends the runtime of “American Psycho” reveling in his own evil. Convinced he is a serial killer who dispatched several innocent victims, the cold-blooded Bateman is stunned when it’s revealed that the colleague he killed is alive and well. Not only that, but he might not even be Bateman at all. Were his gruesome crimes even real? Is his entire life a lie? Or is Patrick the thing he fears most of all: completely unremarkable?
#2: Norman Bates
“Psycho” (1960)
It’s debatable whether or not you could call Norman Bates the main character of “Psycho.” But after Marion Crane is killed off in the shower, the viewer spends most of the second half empathizing with him. He is, after all, a sad and lonely guy cleaning up after his sick and abusive old mom’s murders. Or at least, that’s what we’re supposed to think. The climax reveals that sweet, sensitive Norman is our killer. He’s not only responsible for Marion’s death, but his own mother’s as well. Wracked with guilt, he dons the old lady’s clothes and a wig whenever Mother’s homicidal “personality” takes over. It’s a twist that’s been duplicated, but its effect on its original audience is still the stuff of film legend.
#1: Narrator/Tyler Durden
“Fight Club” (1999)
Since its release, this David Fincher-directed adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel has been the subject of controversy and debate. Is it a satire of suppressed, toxic masculinity or is it the real thing? One thing that can’t be denied, though, is the mind-blowing revelation in the movie’s last act. Our Narrator, played by Edward Norton, finally comes to his senses and tries to stop Tyler Durden’s emerging terrorist cell, Project Mayhem. In the process, the Narrator realizes Durden, played by Brad Pitt, is actually his alter ego. He is the one responsible for Fight Club and all its misogynistic rhetoric.
