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The horror villains of the decade (so far) you won't ever forget.
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00:00Though we're only about halfway through the 2020s so far, it's already been one hell of a decade for
00:06the horror genre. All the way through the challenging pandemic years, horror remained
00:10fertile and lucrative, a testament to how the genre connects with the masses and has fostered
00:15a global community of fans. But how great can any horror film really be without an equally great
00:20villain? The problem inevitably is that it's tough to come up with a genuinely unique and
00:24memorable horror antagonist these days, considering we've all seen dozens, even hundreds of
00:29renditions of ghosts, monsters, mass killers, and so on. But these horror movies all prove
00:34there's still plenty of room for villains who are either original or in the very least
00:38extremely strong iterations of well-worn archetypes. I'm Ellie for WhatCulture, and let's take
00:44a look at the greatest horror villains of the 2020s so far. Starting with Pearl, X and Pearl.
00:51Ty West's X introduced the world to Pearl, an elderly, unrelentingly horny woman who, with
00:57her husband Howard, preys upon the young, attractive folk who rent out their farmhouse to shoot a porn
01:03film. Pearl is implied to be jealous of their youth and sexuality, and so she and her hubby go
01:08about wiping the lot of them out, which they almost succeed at, save for sole survivor Maxine
01:14Minx. And West cemented Pearl as an all-timer horror villain in her self-titled prequel,
01:20where Mia Goth dives into Pearl's earlier life as an angry young woman living a cloistered existence
01:25in rural Texas. Fascinating though it is to see Pearl become the serial killer we later know her as,
01:31it's Goth's Oscar-worthy performance that well and truly pushes the character over the top,
01:36cemented by a mesmerising long-take monologue that few are likely to forget.
01:41The Grabber, The Black Phone. There haven't been nearly enough truly iconic masked killers in horror
01:47movies this decade so far, so The Black Phone's The Grabber definitely supplied an underserved
01:53genre niche. For one, The Grabber is just a fundamentally creepy-looking piece of work,
01:58but behind his eerie mask is a flesh-and-blood man who abducts and kills children in plain sight
02:04amid an unaware suburbia. Ethan Hawke's casting is also key here. The actor has rarely played villains
02:11throughout his career for fear of being typecast, so it's a unique treat to see him perform with
02:16such unrelenting menace. And yet Hawke underplays a potentially over-the-top antagonist, his voice
02:22and subtle physical movements ensuring he always cuts a pulse-quickening presence. In fact, Hawke
02:28was so damn good in the role that director Scott Derrickson couldn't resist but bring him back from
02:33the dead for The Black Phone 2, having him live on as a Freddy Krueger-esque dreamstalker,
02:38because why the heck not?
02:40Frank, Barbarian.
02:42Horror villains don't get much more stomach-churningly vile than Frank from Barbarian,
02:47a man who spent years abducting and sexually assaulting young women, in turn getting them
02:51pregnant and then repeating the very same abuse on their children. Though Frank doesn't get much
02:56screen time throughout Zack Greger's gonzo horror flick, and spends the entirety of the present-day
03:01timeline confined to a bed, he makes one hell of an impression as the father of the grotesque
03:06mutant woman stalking the bowels of his home. And of course, the ever-great Richard Brake is one of
03:12the all-time best weirdo character actors, so it's little surprise that he gave a supremely chilling
03:17performance in the role. As outlandish as Barbarian ultimately is, there's still a real, grounded core
03:23to Frank's character. People like him do exist, and that's so much scarier than even the creepiest
03:30of supernatural entities. Johnny, in a violent nature. Again, there's been a disappointing lack
03:36of truly statuesque and memorable slasher villains as of late. But in a violent nature came totally
03:42out of nowhere and gave us one for the ages. Though Chris Nash's film is a deconstructionist
03:47riff on the prototypical slasher, shot and staged as an art house film, Nash still managed to deliver
03:54a genuinely great villain in Hulk King serial killer Johnny. Johnny is very obviously inspired
03:59by Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees, an absolute unit who wears a cool mask and saunters around
04:05hacking up unsuspecting young folk who cross his path in the picturesque outdoors. While his lore
04:10and characterisation certainly aren't as deep as the horror villains on this list go, Johnny is a prime
04:16example of a simple but effective antagonist. His firefighter mask looks great, and he's responsible
04:21for at least a few of the most memorable kills of any recent horror movie, especially one involving
04:26a certain yoga-practicing young lady. With a sequel currently in production, hopefully it'll firmly
04:31establish Johnny as a pure genre icon. Megan? Megan. Before the first trailer for Blumhouse's
04:38killer android movie Megan dropped, nobody could have predicted just how iconic a character she would
04:43become. The deliciously tongue-in-cheek marketing did a fantastic job of showing off Megan's delightfully
04:49sassy demeanour, flamboyant killing methods, and of course her lifelike yet uncanny design. And given
04:55that concerns about the proliferation of AI began to hit the mainstream just as the film was released,
05:01everything about the character's conception feels quite perfectly timed. Megan was a meme months
05:06before her first film ever came out, and the movie itself absolutely surpassed expectations,
05:11cementing her as one of the most distinctive and memorable horror antagonists in years.
05:15It's a shame that the sequel flopped at the box office, largely due to shifting away from horror
05:20to sci-fi action, making it quite possible that we've already seen the last of this undeniably
05:25fascinating and hilarious villain. But even if Megan 3.0 never materialises, genre fans will still
05:32remember her years and years from now. Adrian Griffin, The Invisible Man
05:36Lee Warnell's new take on The Invisible Man was considerably better than most were surely expecting,
05:42and this is in large part because Warnell managed to ground the outlandish premise within the context
05:47of a post-MeToo world. Our villain, Adrian Griffin, is swiftly introduced as the vile, abusive partner
05:54of protagonist Cecilia. And once Cecilia manages to escape his fortified home, it's soon revealed that
06:00Adrian has killed himself. But of course, Adrian actually hasn't died. He has instead faked his own
06:05death and then uses his invisible bodysuit to torment Cecilia, even causing those closest to her to question
06:11her sanity. It's a brilliantly clever, genre-infused take on gaslighting. And even though Adrian isn't
06:17physically visible in the film for very long, his eerie presence is felt in pretty much every single
06:23scene. Needless to say, when Cecilia turns the tables on Adrian at the end and uses one of his
06:28own bodysuits to kill him, in turn staging it to look like a suicide, it's ludicrously satisfying.
06:34Count Orlok, Nosferatu. Even though Count Orlok made his cinematic debut over 100 years ago in 1922's
06:42original Nosferatu, and is himself inspired by Count Dracula from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel,
06:49writer-director Robert Eggers and actor Bill Skarsgård made the character feel wholly new in
06:54their recent remake. Eggers leans hard into the grotesque nature of Orlok, presented here as a
07:00legitimately corpse-like entity who indeed looks like an undead nobleman, rather than a more
07:06heightened monster as in the original 1922 film. But the bold choice to end all bold choices, of
07:11course, is that moustache. And while some found Orlok's prominent lip caterpillar unintentionally
07:17comical, it absolutely suited Eggers' conception of Orlok as a corrupted man rather than an abstract
07:23entity. Between all this, the incredible makeup and costuming, and of course Skarsgård's magnificent
07:29performance in the role, we were given a new Orlok to rule them all, and quite possibly the single
07:34most terrifying Dracula or Dracula-adjacent character ever committed to screen. The electric
07:39lady, Strange Darling. Much of the brilliance of Strange Darling's villain lies in the fact that it
07:45just isn't what audience expect at all. The marketing for the film sold J.T. Molnir's twisted
07:51horror thriller as a cat-and-mouse game between a young woman and the psychopath chasing her down.
07:56But per the movie's non-linear structure, we don't learn the truth until the halfway point,
08:01that the woman is actually a serial killer called the Electric Lady, and the psychopath is really one
08:06of her justifiably pissed-off intended victims, who just so happens to also be a cop.
08:10Willa Fitzgerald gives a phenomenal performance in the role, lending enormous dimension to a character
08:15who could easily come off one note in the hands of a lesser cast and crew. Instead, she's a fascinating
08:21and expectation-defying example of a horror villain driven to kill through compulsion
08:26to eliminate anyone who she perceives as a devil rather than a human being.
08:31The Monkey. The Monkey.
08:33Osgood Perkins did wonders by making a cursed inanimate object one of the most compelling,
08:38even iconic, horror foes of recent years in his new film, The Monkey.
08:42The villain is ultimately a cursed wind-up toy monkey, which, whenever its wind-up key is turned,
08:47will cause random, insane deaths in its vicinity. Much of the fun here lies in the sheer, unbridled,
08:53unpredictable chaos that The Monkey causes. There's no telling who will die or the utterly deranged,
08:59Final Destination-esque manner in which they might expire. Despite The Monkey, again, not being alive
09:04in the technical sense, and having no voice or any outward characteristics, it still manages to be
09:10one of the most eerie horror villains of recent times. It's all about actions, and considering some
09:15of the sicko death scenes this thing conjures up, its place in horror history feels rightly
09:19cemented. For anyone fed up with typical masked slashes and generic monsters, this cursed toy
09:24is quite the antidote.
09:26Dr. Cecilia Peterson, Saw X
09:29Saw X pulled off an impressive narrative sleight of hand by transitioning the jigsaw killer,
09:34John Kramer, into something of an anti-hero role, by having him face off against an antagonist who was
09:40even more vile and sadistic than himself. And that person is Dr. Cecilia Peterson, a con artist who scams
09:47terminally ill cancer patients out of their life savings in exchange for an experimental, apparently
09:52miraculous treatment. Flaky, though, Kramer's own moral code is. At least the guy isn't taking advantage
09:58of the most vulnerable people in society. There are no lessons to be taught here, merely a hall-of-fame
10:04-tier
10:04sociopath robbing dying folk of their money. Fans were certainly excited to see Cecilia get a well-earned
10:10demise at Kramer's hands then, and so were surely disappointed that she actually survived the events
10:15of the movie, even if her precise fate remains firmly up in the air. We can only hope that the
10:20recently greenlit Saw XI will pick this thread back up and give Cecilia the miserable end she so
10:26obviously deserves. Ratma, VHS 94. Though the VHS franchise is wildly hit and miss, as is the case
10:34with most horror anthologies, every so often it rustles up an antagonist so damn good that audiences
10:40actually scream out for them to get their own standalone movie. And in recent years, it was VHS
10:4594's Storm Drain which struck gold with Ratma, the fabled sewer-dwelling man-rat creature commonly
10:52referred to as the Ratman. For one, Ratma is just innately repulsive, a disgusting, beast-like
10:58thing which vomits a caustic liquid capable of burning a person's flesh clean off. And if that's
11:03not enough, Ratma also has a cult of followers who believe it will help them build a new world,
11:08prompting them to chant, Hail Ratma! Ratma quickly became something of a viral hit following the film's
11:14release. And even though four years have passed, the nightmarish entity still remains one of the most
11:19beloved in the series' storied history. Ratma the movie when? Nobody. Bodies, Bodies, Bodies.
11:26And now for an entirely unlikely entry on this list, because when we say that the villain in
11:31murder mystery Bodies, Bodies, Bodies is nobody, we're not talking about some metaphysical entity.
11:36Quite literally, there's no real villain. The movie's horrendously self-involved, obnoxious
11:42characters swiftly start turning on one another after David is apparently brutally murdered early on,
11:47his throat haven't been slashed with a cookery. But the big hilarious payoff is that, in fact,
11:52David wasn't murdered at all. He accidentally cut his own throat while trying to open a champagne
11:56bottle with the cookery. That is to say, all of the paranoia-laced deaths that followed were
12:01totally preventable if cooler heads prevailed. In that respect, you could argue that everybody
12:05was a villain by so thoroughly abandoning logic. But at the same time, the shadowy murderer everyone
12:11expected to be the culprit was nothing more than a collective fantasy conjured in the wake of an
12:16admittedly improbable, insanely gnarly accident. Laura, Bring Her Back
12:21Danny and Michael Philippot's Bring Her Back is a bleak examination of grief in which a bereaved
12:27mother, Laura, attempts to enact a demonic resurrection ritual on one of her foster children
12:31in order to bring her late daughter back to life. Sally Hawkins gives a phenomenal Oscar-worthy
12:37performance as Laura, a character who has suffered devastating loss, as makes her innately sympathetic,
12:43if not for the fact that her obsession with bringing her child back from death has overridden
12:48all other logic. Laura's increasingly uneasy and erratic behaviour is deeply discomforting to watch,
12:54until it explodes into outright murder in the final stretch once her carefully laid plan begins
12:59to unfurl. The result is a mesmerising turn from Hawkins, who has helped create one of the most
13:04unhinged horror villains of this year or any other, even if the film never strays too far from the
13:09overpowering sadness at the core of her dysfunction. Brendan, Fresh. An easy way for a horror villain
13:15to well and truly stick with audiences is for them to cast an actor wildly against type. And that's
13:21precisely what happened with Sebastian Stan's Brendan in Fresh. Brendan is introduced as Steve,
13:27a charming hunk who has a chance encounter with the romantically disillusioned Noah, causing a whirlwind
13:33romance to ensue. But of course, if something seems too good to be true, it usually is,
13:38and Steve is actually the worst in a long line of trash men Noah has dated. In this case,
13:43Steve slash Brendan happens to be a cannibal who imprisons Noah in order to surgically remove the
13:48meat from her body to sell to wealth cannibals. Yep, that's quite a turnaround from Marvel fan favourite
13:55Bucky Barnes, and Stan gives a sublimely creepy performance in the role of a man who clearly relishes
14:01every second of his nauseating vocation. Though it's all too relieving when Brendan is finally killed
14:06at film's end, Stan gives such a riotously entertaining turn that you might actually
14:11miss him a little bit. Remick, Sinners. The vampire subgenre feels so thoroughly done to death
14:17in 2025, so it's especially impressive that Ryan Coogler breathes such confident new life into it with
14:23his southern fried horror Sinners. And while the film has so much going for it, where would it be
14:29without its bloodsucking lead vamp, Remick? Though at first it appears that Remick might be a rather shallow
14:34stand-in for white supremacists, he's actually far more interesting than that. An ancient Irish
14:40immigrant who wishes to build himself a new family of vampires in order to compensate for his own
14:45lost community. But as infectiously entertaining as that Irish jig might be? Make no mistake,
14:51he's still a savagely violent villain any way you slice it. Albeit one with considerably greater
14:56dimension than your average vampire pack leader. Jack O'Connell is also terrific in the role,
15:01ensuring Remick is a villain the audience can at least understand, even as aspects of his backstory
15:06remain enticingly vague. Mona Wasserman, Bo is Afraid. Ari Aster's Bo is Afraid is most certainly not
15:13everyone's cup of tea. But this absurdist psychological horror comedy is nothing if not a bold attempt to do
15:19something wildly different with the genre. And at the core of its story, the villain-tormenting
15:24protagonist Bo is his mother, Mona, who faked her own death at the start of the film and has been
15:29surreptitiously spying on her son ever since. Mona is the prototypical mother from hell, an
15:35obnoxiously overbearing woman who resents Bo for not giving her enough attention. She's been listening
15:40in on his therapy sessions, has imprisoned his twin brother and father in her home, and then put her
15:46own son on trial for his perceived slights against her. Obviously, the reality of the film becomes ever
15:51more dubious once Mona shows up, but she's ultimately one of horror's all-time great examples of an
15:57abusive parent as genre villain. Julian Slowick, The Menu. The Menu was a deliciously entertaining
16:04black comedy horror in which a group of diners find themselves preyed upon by their psychopathically
16:09pissed-off celebrity chef for the evening, Julian Slowick. Despite his composed veneers, Slowick has
16:14actually invited the various guests to his fancy night of dining because they've all in some way
16:19contributed to him losing his love of cooking. His revenge? To kill every single person in the
16:25restaurant by the end of the night, his guests, his willing kitchen staff, and also himself.
16:30It's a fantastically twisted setup, and Ralph Fiennes does a marvellous job of making a potentially
16:35cartoonish antagonist not only relatively relatable, but even sympathetic to a point. His methods are
16:41undeniably extreme, yes, but to see a chef of his position thumb his nose so decisively at superficial
16:48foodie culture and everything it encompasses is tremendously satisfying. Despite having obviously lost his mind,
16:54Slowick maintains a composed calm for the most part, as makes him all the more intimidating when the
17:00violence ramps up. For his part in bringing Slowick to life, Fiennes went on to receive a well-earned Best
17:06Actor
17:06Golden Globe nomination. Aunt Gladys, Weapons. Zach Kreger's Weapons impressively one-upped his previous film
17:14Barbarian with an even more fascinating and unforgettable antagonist, the literally mesmerising Aunt Gladys.
17:21From her baffling sense of style to her chilling mode of speech and all-around aura, Gladys is a deeply
17:27unsettling villain, a witch who preys upon children in Maybrook, Pennsylvania to sustain herself.
17:32Kreger sensibly doesn't go overboard filling the audience in on all the finer details, but gives us
17:38enough to know that Gladys is most likely an ancient witch who has been enchanting and manipulating
17:43communities for centuries for her own gain. Oscar nominee Amy Madigan disappeared completely into the role,
17:49being both physically unrecognisable and giving a performance quite unlike any she has before.
17:55Expect Gladys to be a popular Halloween costume for years and years to come, and on top of all this,
18:00she also gets one of the most brilliantly satisfying death scenes of any horror villain ever,
18:05when she's viciously torn apart by the very children she took control of.
18:09Deadite Ellie, Evil Dead Rise
18:11The Evil Dead franchise has served up its fair share of unforgettable Deadite villains,
18:16but it well and truly outdid itself with Evil Dead Rise and its central antagonist, the Deadite-possessed
18:22Ellie. For starters, actress Alyssa Sutherland's incredible striking looks make her appear positively
18:28diabolic in Deadite form, to say nothing of her bracingly intense physical performance,
18:33making her one of the most viscerally terrifying antagonists in the entire franchise.
18:37In the Deadite tradition, Ellie also has a ton of fun mocking both her sister Beth and her three
18:42children, chillingly telling her kids,
18:45Mummy's with the maggots now. And even for the standards of Deadites, Ellie is mean,
18:50given that she ultimately causes the death of two of her three children, leaving behind only her
18:55youngest daughter Cassie. As such, there's an obvious underlayer of tragedy to all this,
19:00that Ellie's body is hijacked and perverted to such depraved ends, and so when she's finally fed
19:06into a woodchipper at the end, it feels like a huge mercy. And finally, Art the Clown, Terrifier
19:12franchise. Really, could there be another number one pick than Art the Clown from the Terrifier
19:18franchise? Though it's absolutely fair to point out that the first Terrifier actually released back
19:23in 2016, and Art had appeared in two short films prior to this, it had a relatively muted initial
19:29release and didn't become a cult hit until the post-pandemic era. The enormous success of
19:34Terrifier 2 cemented Art's place in the genre pantheon, his playful penchant for nauseating
19:40torture and dismemberment, elevated at all turns by the physical performance of the brilliant David
19:45Howard Thornton, who ensures Art is more than just another creepy clown antagonist. By the time
19:51Terrifier 3 arrived last year, it was pretty much indisputable that Art was one of the few truly
19:57iconic horror mascots of the 2020s, and one who will likely be remembered alongside the hallowed kings of
20:03the genre decades from now.
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