10 Movies Where The Villain Isn't Seen Until The End

There are plenty of great films out there that get by with no discernible bad guy -- or at least nobody we'd want inducted into the villain hall of fame -- but even films that have a clear and present antagonist often don't quite know what to do with them, over-utilising their big bad or leaving them in narrative limbo. Think Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) standing around whistlin' Dixie in X-Men, or Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) resurfacing time and again, to diminishing returns, in Saw.

Some writers and directors, however, know what to do with a good thing, and understand the principle of less is more. For there are a smattering of films that manage to hold back their villain until the very end, relying on mystery, mystique and some good ol' fashioned plot to lay the groundwork in preparation for a bad guy that can really take things to the next level.

Taking in films from across the canon, here are ten pretty great movies that manage to keep their bad guy off-screen until the final act, whether they're hiding in plain sight, controlling things from the shadows or just have better places to be.

Though it may be hard to imagine now, given the overall state of the franchise, the Fantastic Beasts series actually kicked off with a solid movie, introducing an interesting storyline, a whole host of lovable creatures and characters, and what could have been an epic villain: Johnny Depp's Gellert Grindelwald. Unfortunately, he spends the majority of the movie in absentia.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) focuses on Eddie Redmayne's kooky, quirky magical zoologist Newt Scamander, who gets embroiled in a scheme far larger and deadlier than anything he intended. Stalked by the sinister Government Director of Magical Security, Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), everything comes to a head during a final showdown in the New York subway, where Graves is revealed to be more than meets the eye.

It turns out he has been harbouring a Grindelwald-shaped face beneath a grim, officious exterior the whole time, using his power, influence and firm dissimilarity to one of the greatest dark wizards of all time to manipulate the civilised wizarding world in his favour.

This narrative reveal is clearly designed to mimic the progenitor of this series -- the Harry Potter movies -- and get fans back into the same mode, ready to be ploughed with another two, three, four(?!) instalments.