Cry for the Devil moments in Film.
- A Clockwork Orange, both the Kubrick movie and the original book. Alex, a murderer and rapist becomes sympathetic when he is laid low, repeatedly humiliated, and manipulated for political reasons by a corrupt system. It's an ode to bad people everywhere, because if people aren't free to choose evil, they cease to be people in any meaningful sense.
It's exaggerated in the novel, especially in the scene where Alex has just been released and goes to see his parents, only to find that they've got a new lodger who has become like a son to them. For added dog-kickery, the guy has actually moved into Alex's room. It's hard not to pity the poor bastard. - Alien: Resurrection: The Newborn was a murderous abomination, but unlike the aliens, shows some emotion, and acts as a naive and childlike creature. And its death was long and agonizing. Ripley 8 showed remorse for it - then again, besides the fact it had imprinted on her as its mother she's kind of its grandmother - and even Call had to look away in dismay during the Newborn's brutal death.
- Blade Runner 2049: Many audience members found themselves feeling unexpectedly sorry for Luv, the ruthless and at times sadistic Replicant enforcer of Wallace, given that she has no actual choice in the matter of her job and is forced to watch her boss murder other Replicants just for kicks and lead his crusade that, if successful, will lead only to her eventually being rendered obsolete.
- Bram Stoker's Dracula: Despite his wanton rape and murder, you can't help but feel bad for Dracula, largely due to his tragic backstory and Gary Oldman's empathetic performance.
- The film of Bridge to Terabithia has a lot of this. The bully girl has a drunken abusive father, the cold emotionless teacher hasn't gotten over her husband's death, etc.
- The end of Cruel Intentions. Rich Bitch Kathryn Merteuil has spent the entire movie plotting to ruin the lives of people she considers social inferiors, using her stepbrother Sebastian Valmont as the tool for said ruination. She almost gets away with it...but she didn't reckon on two of her former victims deciding to get the goods on her and her schemes. While she's delivering a eulogy for her dead stepbrother in a church, the mourners begin to file out and her Smug Snake facade yields quickly to a "how dare you filthy peasants" sort of rant. She storms out angrily - and finds everyone reading copies of Sebastian's recently published diary, distributed by the two aforementioned victims. Kathryn's entire social circle now knows that she is a mean-spirited schemer and a cocaine addict, and to top it off, she finally gets to read the diary herself and see just how strongly Sebastian felt toward her. And she just stands there and silently cries, humiliated and shamed. Even Word of God in the DVD commentary finds it hard not to feel bad for her now, even considering all the villainy she's committed prior to this.
- The story this film was based on has the character of Merteuil get it even worse. At least Kathryn will now likely be subjected to psychological help and rehab for her cocaine problem and get better from this phase of her life (IT'S HIGH SCHOOL!). The original Merteuil, on the other hand, loses everything when her reputation crumbles, and to add injury to insult, she contracts smallpox and her face ends up permanently disfigured. She was a manipulative bitch, but damn.
- DC Extended Universe:
- Man of Steel: The brief moment when Zod laments that now he has "no people" (after his crew was sent into the Phantom Zone and the Scout Ship with the genesis chamber got wrecked, leaving no possibility of reviving the Kryptonian race). It's cut short by his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, but still poignant.
- SHAZAM! (2019): Dr. Sivana grew up in an abusive household with a Big Brother Bully and a father who called him a loser. When brought to the Rock of Eternity during a car accident, he is tempted by the Seven Deadly Sins and thus sent packing, being deemed not worthy for that even though he was just a kid at the time and didn't know any better. And his mistreatment only intensified after the accident, as his father and brother both blamed him for something he literally had no control over, leading him to grow up into a traumatized adult who still receives scorn from his family and spent his whole life trying to find the power he could have had. Thus when he finally returns to the Rock of Eternity, he frees the Sins to spite the wizard who rejected him, and goes straight in a transition into a murderous psychopath, who even turns out to be very willing to kill a child. Still, in spite of crossing the Moral Event Horizon, once he's defeated Sivana suffers a complete mental breakdown.
- Zack Snyder's Justice League: Despite being an unrepentant conqueror, Steppenwolf does have moments where the audience can sympathize with him. It's mentioned that he had some kind of clash with Darkseid when the latter took the throne, which is left open to interpretation. He decimates worlds because it's the only way Darkseid will forgive him and he has to deal with DeSaad kicking him while he's down, his look of sadness seems shockingly genuine. After being beaten and killed by the Justice League, Darkseid dismisses him as a failure in spite of his near-success, with Desaad getting in one more snipe at Steppenwolf's expense.
- Invoked on Jason's behalf in Freddy vs. Jason. Though both titular characters are serial killers who murder a ton of innocent (if bland and slightly annoying) teenagers, Jason is clearly the more sympathetic of the two, and the one the audience is meant to root for. His traumatic childhood, fraught with relentless bullying and neglect, is emphasized, and Freddy uses the dark memories to cruelly torture him. On the other hand, Freddy is just a sadistic psychopath, child murderer (and it's all but outright stated, molester), and monster without a single redeeming quality to boast of. Unless you count his infamously awful jokes and bad chldhood. It's a case of black and vantablack morality, really.
- The two MUTO from Godzilla (2014) for their nature as Tragic Monsters. While they indeed do pose a threat to mankind, especially moreso if they ended up reproducing, ultimately the MUTO were not evil, malicious creatures, but merely very big animals who wanted to raise their family in peace. Indeed, they get several endearing Pet the Dog moments, such as when the male and female have an affectionate courtship ritual, to the point when it's genuinely tearjerking to see the female MUTO shrieking in anguish over her destroyed offspring.
- The beginning of Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) is this trope; the viewers are expected to know that the cute little boy is a serial-killer-to-be.
- Long before the remake, both the first film's novelization and several sequels imply that Michael is the superhuman killing machine he is because of an Ancient Evil that latched onto him when he was a child. Halloween 5 even has a fleeting moment where he sheds a Single Tear as the human inside him breaks through. It doesn't make him any less terrifying, but it does cast his murderous actions and robotic demeanour in a slightly different way.
- Dr. Seuss' The Grinch. We all know the story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!; we know how the cold-hearted, hate-filled Grinch tried to ruin the merriment of the good, honest Whos of Whoville, the wretch. But then, we're given a completely different look at things: we're still given the HOW, but now we're shown the WHY as well — and frankly, who could blame him? In the scene where the mayor is giving an annual prize about holiday cheer or somesuch, Cindy Lou Who refers to the page quote and nominates the Grinch, saying that he's the one who needs it most. The fact that the Grinch is played hilariously by Jim Carrey helps.
- Rico from Judge Dredd, despite being a murderous psychopath, seems to sincerely love Judge Dredd like a brother and tries several times to sway Dredd to his side. At one point, he is this close to crying while yelling at Dredd for judging him.Rico: (On the brink of tears) I'm the only family you ever had!
- A notorious example exists in the Korean version of Oldboy (2003). The Big Bad of the movie, Woo-jin, goes to unbelievable lengths in a deacades-long plan to ruin Dae-su's life as revenge for Dae-su spreading rumors about Woo-jin's sister that later drove her to commit suicide, though it doesn't justify Woo-jin's appalling acts of revenge. After Woo-jin has finally achieved his revenge, he goes into an elevator and has a flashback to the day his sister killed herself where he managed to grab her arm as she tried to jump off a building but she made him let go of her, falling to her death. After reliving it, he promptly blows his brains out.
- This happens In-Universe in the film The Lost King when Philippa Langley watches a production of Richard III and can't help sympathize with Richard and comes to believe he was maligned by Tudor historians.
- In Scream 3 The Ghostface in this movie Roman Bridger is as it turns out is a Greater-Scope Villain who even after causing four years worth of terror and tragedy still feels the need to go on his own rampage which means killing everyone in sight with the intention of framing Sidney his half-sister. Safe to say it’s easy to hate him until you remember that Roman is Maureen's Child by Rape who was left to fend for himself his whole life and when he tried to reach out to his mother with the all too human desire to be part of a family - she brutally rejects him for reasons that weren’t his fault! Even Sydney herself seems to pity the poor bastard as he dies…
- A variation of this trope is present in Shadow of the Vampire. In it, Max Schreck, the real-life actor who played Count Orlok in Nosferatu, is portrayed as actually being a vampire. For most of the movie he's a card-carrying monster, feasting on the blood of a quickly-dwindling cast and crew with no regrets or mercy. However, there's a scene in the middle of the movie when Schreck stops to have a (non-blood) drink with some crew members, who grill him on what it is like to be a "vampire" (they assume Schreck is just a very committed method actor) and what his opinion of Dracula is. Schreck's response is quite morose as he proceeds to describe Dracula, from the vampire's point of view, as a tragedy of sorts:Max Schreck: Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years, and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he...that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.
- Star Wars:
- Darth Vader killed younglings, caused the destruction of the Republic by foolishly believing in a Sith Lord, and later participated in several massacres, but when he sees what he's become and how his son's been hurt, there is plenty of crying for him once he sacrifices himself.
- Ditto for his grandson, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, who killed his father, Han Solo, ordered the massacre of civilians and is indirectly responsible for the deaths of his mother, Leia Organa, and uncle, Luke Skywalker, but is also shown to be deeply conflicted and in emotional agony throughout the trilogy, which made his death by way of sacrificing his life for Rey extremely sad for many viewers.
- Khan from Star Trek is one mean, manipulative, arrogant bastard, but the movie Wrath of Khan shows that maybe had his planet not turned into a Crapsack World, and a bunch of worms not killed off a third of his people including his wife, he may have been at least "a little" nicer.
Especially if you take into account the book To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, where he really tries to become better and live a peaceful life with his people. He only becomes a villain again because that plan is destroyed by an ecological disaster. (All of which is hinted at in the movie.) That makes it really sad when he says in the film:"This is Ceti Alpha V!" - In Star Trek Into Darkness Harrison is unquestionably evil, but the impassioned speech he gives in the Enterprise's brig about how he failed to protect his crew and believed they were dead, complete with teary eyes and comparing them to his family, makes it hard not to feel a bit bad for him. That, and that his people's supposed murder was his motivation to strafe Starfleet's top officers.
- Loki in Thor. On the one hand, he's a conniving, power-hungry liar, willing to betray his brother and doom him to permanent banishment while he usurped the throne. On the other hand, he's a deeply damaged young man who's convinced he's The Unfavorite, especially after finding out he was not only adopted, but from an enemy race, and is desperate for his father's approval and affection.
- Made even sadder because he already had his father's approval and affection but convinced himself otherwise. And also because he's obviously going down a darker path, being the Big Bad in The Avengers movie.
- Tremors 5: Bloodlines: Some audience members found themselves feeling sorry for the Graboids when the heroes destroy their nest and use their last egg as bait to kill the final Queen, who was just trying to protect her offspring.
