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  1. Entertainment
  2. Movies

50 Unreliable Movie Narrators

Features
By Joshua Winning published 4 June 2013

Spoilers and big, fat fibbers follow...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

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Atonement (2007)

The Unreliable Narrator: Briony, played by Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave, who narrates the love story of her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy).

Biggest Whopper:
The couple's unhappy ending.

Though Briony wrote in her novel that they were happily reacquainted, Robbie actually died in Dunkirk, while Cecilia perished during The Blitz. Sob.

Fallen (1998)

The Unreliable Narrator: The identity of the narrator of this creepy thriller isn't revealed until the final act, in an expectation-flouting rug pull.

When he's unmasked, it turns the entire film upside down.

Biggest Whopper: Turns out the narrator is Azazel the demon, who's now taken possession of a cat...

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Unreliable Narrator: Bernstein (Everett Sloane), just one of the many narrators in the film who recall the life of Charles Kane, but may not be entirely reliable – and probably aren't.

Biggest Whopper: He paints a picture of Kane as the perfect man, despite stories to the contrary.

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Badlands (1973)

The Unreliable Narrator: Holly (Sissy Spacek), who narrates her affair with psychotic Kit (Martin Sheen) after they run away together.

Biggest Whopper : Sally's description of her romance with Kit (“He wanted to die with me and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms”) rings particularly false when we realise they're both using each other as distractions from boredom.

300 (2007)

The Unreliable Narrator: Dilios (David Wenham), who recalls the battle between the Spartans and the Persians, but surely embellished slightly – especially when it came to the supernatural foes the Spartans had to face.

Biggest Whopper:
The giant wolf, surely.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

The Unreliable Narrator: John Nash (Russell Crowe), a paranoid schizophrenic whose story turns out to be almost entirely made up.

Biggest Whopper: It's not really a whopper because he believes it's true, but Nash does create three entire people (Charles, Marcee and Parcher) that don't actually exist.

Frailty (2001)

The Unreliable Narrator: Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey), who walks into a police station one day and confesses to murdering at the whim of his demon-hunting father.

Biggest Whopper: For a start, his name isn't even Fenton, it's Adam.

He killed his brother Fenton and told the cops about the other murders in order to lure Agent Doyle in as his next victim...

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The Last Broadcast (1998)

The Unreliable Narrator: David Leigh (David Beard), a documentary filmmaker who investigates the mysterious murders of a couple of TV hosts.

Biggest Whopper: As the film comes to its shocking close, we discover that Leigh is in fact the murderer, and everything he's said thus far has been a lie.

Who's been a naughty boy, then?

Shutter Island (2010)

The Unreliable Narrator: Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshal who travels to an insane asylum to investigate the disappearance of a woman.

Biggest Whopper: The film's final twist reveals that Teddy is, in fact, an inmate at the asylum and has been lying to himself all along as a form of denial.

American Psycho (2000)

The Unreliable Narrator: Suit-wearing Wall Street wolf Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), whose beauty regime rivals Joan Collins' and who has a penchant for murder.

Or does he?

Biggest Whopper: So Patrick killed Paul (Jared Leto)? How come somebody had lunch with him just the other day?

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Joshua Winning
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Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.  

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