00:00A traditional status quo found within the horror genre means that as opposed to relying on improving their levels of
00:06intelligence to ultimately win out,
00:08many villains simply triumph due to a combination of their supernatural abilities and a physical refusal to just die.
00:15But there are also some horror villains who apparently undergo a mysterious boost in IQ in the gap between sequels.
00:22Well, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with horror movie villains who became smarter in the sequel.
00:29Imhotep in The Mummy Returns.
00:31Arnold Vosloo's Imhotep is understandably a bit of a lone wolf when it comes to proceedings in 1999's first instalment.
00:39There isn't a great deal of planning to go with his campaign for global domination either.
00:44The man, Mummy, was quite literally brought back to life by accident as a result of some overly curious light
00:51reading from Rachel Weisz's Evelyn.
00:53When he returns in the aptly named The Mummy Returns, Imhotep is noticeably more intelligent after his first brush with
00:59humans from outside the age of the pharaohs.
01:02For starters, the former high priest uses human acolytes to his advantage without turning them into moaning zombie-like followers
01:09like the first time around.
01:11Imhotep is also smart enough to realise that he can't finish off the O'Connells without using the deadly rage
01:17of the Scorpion King to his advantage,
01:20slyly feigning fealty to Dwayne Johnson's nightmarishly bad CGI depiction of the legendary warrior so as to unleash his fury
01:27on Brendan Fraser's Rick.
01:29His master plan? Lull the Scorpion King into a false sense of security so as to catch him unawares and
01:35claim the power of the army of the dead by killing him.
01:38It was a great plan foiled only by Rick O'Connell's stunning slow-mo spear-catching skills.
01:44And who could have realistically prepared for that?
01:46Herbert West in Bride of Re-Animator.
01:49Herbert West was already arguably on par with Victor Frankenstein in terms of intelligence after the events of cult classic
01:56Re-Animator.
01:57The 1985 comedy horror saw West, you guessed it, re-animate cadavers and cats alike in his maniacal first entry
02:05in the greatest cinematic mad scientist sweepstakes.
02:08Despite being dragged away by his own nightmarish creations towards the end of that original outing, West returns with an
02:15absolute vengeance in the sequel.
02:17He also tricks the hapless Dan Kane into believing that his interest lies in reviving his dead fiancée Megan when
02:24West is really only after her heart.
02:26No matter the depraved moral depths he sinks to, West only responds with a terrifyingly unhinged uptake in his already
02:33formidable intelligence.
02:35Truly one of cinema's finest mad scientists, the elite hunting club in Hostel 2.
02:41If you can't beat him, make him join you.
02:44The despicable elite hunting club depicted within Eli Roth's Hostel universe are no slouches when it comes to quick thinking.
02:51Hardly surprising really, as it's probably quite difficult to engineer a depraved organisation that abducts and sadistically murders unsuspecting tourists
02:59if the entire operation is run by a bunch of dolts.
03:03Unfazed by the escape of original protagonist Paxton in the first outing, the sequel reveals that the organisation wasted little
03:10time with the swiftest and most brutal of reprisals.
03:13For poor Paxton, his girlfriend Stephanie discovers his decapitated corpse at the breakfast table.
03:19After all, it's a lot harder to squeal to the police without a head.
03:23Furthermore, Sasha, the ominous head of the vile organisation, reveals the extent of just how terrifyingly formidable he is in
03:30the film's climactic sequence.
03:32To the extent where viewers find themselves wondering whether Paxton would have even survived the first movie had he come
03:38up against this iteration of the elite hunting club.
03:41Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek 2
03:44One of the most controversial and straight-up harrowing films to make its bow throughout the 2000s was Greg McLean's
03:51outback horror Wolf Creek.
03:53The film depicts the stomach-churning exploits of one of the more depraved serial killers ever conceived in John Jarrett's
03:59Mick Taylor.
04:00Taylor is an evil, twisted man of terrifying proportions, and he's no slouch in the brains department either,
04:07ending the original film quite literally walking off into the sunset, having successfully gotten away with the unimaginably savage murders
04:15of two of the picture's three core protagonists.
04:17The xenophobic sadist is only more wickedly brilliant in 2013's follow-up, effortlessly lulling his victims into a false sense
04:25of security with his bumbling persona before unleashing a wave of unspeakable violence.
04:31Despite increasing the terrifying scale of his demented rampage to extend to police officers and even more victims than the
04:38first time around,
04:39the deranged Hellspawn still successfully covers his tracks, framing one of his victims for his killing spree.
04:46Wolf Creek 2 ends with Mick strolling nonchalantly off into the sunset once again without a care in the world.
04:52The Zombies in Zombieland Double Tap
04:55The rabid cadavers depicted within the beloved original may not have been the smartest, but they were certainly formidable.
05:02Ruben Fleischer's iteration of cinematic zombies are the maniacal chase-you-down-and-rip-your-face-off variety,
05:08as opposed to some of their slower, shuffling peers.
05:11However, they were decidedly not the sharpest cookies the zombie genre has ever seen.
05:17Zombieland Double Tap introduces three new subtypes of zombies.
05:20While the aptly named Homers are essentially the zombified equivalent of their Springfield-based namesake,
05:27and do not present much of a challenge,
05:29the other two are considerably more formidable than the original's undead antagonists.
05:34Ninjas possess heightened levels of speed, agility and stealth,
05:38while Hawkins, in a nod to the late great Professor Stephen,
05:42are quite literally more psychologically developed than their counterparts,
05:46climbing ladders and even using gouged-out eyeballs to bypass biometric scanners.
05:51They won't be winning any Nobel Prizes,
05:54but the Hawkins and the Ninjas presented a far trickier intellectual puzzle to solve for our protagonists
05:59and the original's decomposing flesh-eaters.
06:02David in Alien Covenant
06:04Cinema may have seen some devious cyborgs over the years,
06:08but Michael Fassbender's David contentiously represents the gold standard for such a concept.
06:13David was literally designed from head to toe to be a walking fountain of knowledge and assistance to his human
06:19counterparts.
06:20For context, in 2012's reboot of the Alien franchise Prometheus,
06:24he is revealed to be so technologically advanced that he can communicate with the Engineers,
06:29the previously uncontacted creators of humanity,
06:33through an amalgamation of ancient languages,
06:35although this unfortunately doesn't save him from an impromptu decapitation at their hands.
06:40You would have thought that having your head ripped off would put a stop to one's devious schemes.
06:45However, 2017's sequel, Alien Covenant,
06:48revealed that the surviving David had somehow still managed to overpower Elizabeth Shaw,
06:53using her body in his twisted experiments as he engineered the xenomorphs to wipe out humanity.
06:59Overpowering his more technologically advanced doppelganger, Walter,
07:02and staging the most devious Trojan horse operation imaginable in order to execute his master plan,
07:08was just the icing on a particularly Machiavellian cake,
07:12John Kramer in Saw 2.
07:14Always one step ahead of proceedings,
07:16the overarching villain of the Saw franchise, John Kramer,
07:19aka the Jigsaw Killer,
07:21never fails to ramp up the levels of sheer devious planning across his multiple appearances,
07:26and the first sequel in his blood-soaked universe is no exception.
07:29You thought disguising himself as a corpse so he could play a spectator to the original Saw's torturous proceedings was
07:35bad?
07:36This time around, Kramer's genius is partially derived from recruiting his first apprentice,
07:41the devious acolytes of the Jigsaw Killer featured throughout the franchise,
07:45assisting in his abominable schemes and ensure that Kramer's twisted legacy lives on long past the demise of his mortal
07:52husk.
07:52Kramer flips the tables on the police in even more sadistically intelligent fashion this time around,
07:58with the reveal that this instalment's game was not happening in live time.
08:03This macabrely stunning piece of genius allowed John to lure Detective Eric Matthews
08:08to the location where the game was supposedly taking place,
08:12allowing his acolyte Amanda Young to overpower Matthews before he awakens to a tape recording,
08:18gleefully revealing the extent of the plot and Amanda's complicity.
08:21You all know the drill from here, Matthews is left to die screaming in the darkness,
08:26game over and all that.
08:28Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal.
08:30A contentious entry to end proceedings, but hear this take out.
08:34The intellect demonstrated by Hannibal Lecter in his debut appearance in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs
08:41is arguably on such a level that the notion of the cannibalistic psychiatrist surpassing it is almost laughable.
08:47While on the run in 2001 follow-up Hannibal, however, Anthony Hopkins' Machiavellian villain ramps things up to a whole
08:54new level.
08:56Initially posing as a museum curator was a new twist of brilliance in itself,
09:00a role perfectly suited to Lecter's cultured background.
09:04Even with the FBI in rampant pursuit, Hannibal's intellect manifests itself with even more spectacular results this time around.
09:11For context, the Italian chief inspector, one of the more senior figures involved in the manhunt,
09:17ends up dangling from a balcony with his intestines hanging out in gleefully grotesque fashion.
09:22The same shudder-worthy fate that befell historical members of his ancestral family.
09:27Lecter's intelligence is on full display again in the film's climax,
09:31as he realises he is incapable of hurting Clarice,
09:34making the shocking decision to cut off his own arm
09:37in order to escape in a final split-second demonstration of his macabre brilliance.
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