The 40 greatest horror movie villains of all time, ranked

1932’s The Mummy was born from Universal wanting an original evil in their Monsterverse, which had thus far been built off adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein. Despite that cynical inspiration, the idea of an undead pharaoh killing while regenerating his human form has transcended generations. Boris Karloff’s take was civilized and hypnotic, and he was the first Universal monster to be truly talkative. Decades later, the adventure-horror camp of the Brendan Fraser-led films became adored by Millennials, injecting fresh life into the old favorite. [Matt Mills]

The tiny apparition known only as Sam has just one movie to his name thus far, 2007’s Trick ’R Treat, but it was enough to leave a lasting impression. A lot of that is thanks to his distinctive look, which immediately transformed him into a de facto Halloween mascot for loads of horror fans. But there’s something deeper at work in Michael Dougherty’s anthology horror character, something that suggests the true spirit of Halloween isn’t a ghost or a monster, but a child ensuring that traditions are upheld to stave off the dark … or else. [Matthew Jackson]

In 1941, Creature From The Black Lagoon producer William Alland was told a myth by a Mexican cinematographer that a half-man/half-fish hybrid lived in the Amazon. That yarn evolved over 13 years into the last great original Universal monster: an anti-villain whose long-undisturbed cove is invaded by humans and who kidnaps their female doctor in retaliation. The Gill-man’s underwater swimming scenes were groundbreaking, with stunt performer Ricou Browning holding his breath for up to four minutes at a time. [Matt Mills]

The big bad of the Conjuring series, Valak, is as meat-and-potatoes a villain as you can get: a tormentor from Hell who rises to Earth to terrify, possess and be an all-around dickhead. Valak debuted in The Conjuring 2, possessing the young girl Janet Hodgson and appearing to Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) as a pale-faced nun. The demon got two Nun spin-offs, in 2018 and 2023, reaffirming the character as a fixture of modern horror. [Matt Mills]

It was a risk to pin the first Poltergeist sequel on a single, human-looking villain after the first film’s onslaught of creatures and ghosts, but thanks to a legendary performance from Julian Beck, that gamble paid off. With his skeletal grin, his hoarse voice croaking out hymns, and his ability to just show up where he pleases from beyond the grave, Reverend Kane will haunt your nightmares just as much as that clown doll from the first film, if not more. [Matthew Jackson]

Although the werewolf mythos extends back to Ancient Greece (if not further), 1941’s The Wolf Man is what truly codified the monster in terms of cinematic appearances. Lon Chaney Jr., following in the footsteps of his horror legend father, endured meticulous makeup effects and transformation sequences as he changed from lovestruck Welshman Larry Talbot to a murderous creature of the night. Chaney played the Wolf Man throughout the ’40s, eventually considering the character his “baby.” [Matt Mills]

His body has grown and shrunk over the years. The spikes on his tail have changed shape and color. His atomic breath gets hotter or colder depending on the era, but whether he’s a movie star, a cartoon, or just a vinyl figure on your shelf, Godzilla remains the most powerful movie monster in the world. Everyone knows who he is and what he looks like, no matter how much that look evolves, and his presence is such that he can be a hero, a villain, or just one player in a massive monster rally—and still never lose an ounce of his gargantuan presence. [Matthew Jackson]

How could Bughuul not be here? He’s the overarching villain of Sinister, which has scientifically been named the scariest film ever made. He’s also a sadistic Babylonian demon who possesses children so that they murder their entire families. After that, he consumes their souls and repeats the process on whoever moves into the house of those latest killings. Vile, terrifying, and boasting a cult fanbase of Millennial diehards, Bughuul has all the “horror icon” qualifications. [Matt Mills]

Happy Death Day is basically the time-loop plot point of Groundhog Day mixed with Scream’s comedy/slasher/whodunnit mashup. Protagonist Theresa “Tree” Gelbman is slain on her birthday by a killer in a babyface mask, and after her death, she always wakes up on the morning of the same day. Babyface’s identity is the core mystery of the film, with red herrings and clues planted throughout the runtime before an unexpected punchline of a twist. [Matt Mills]

“Clowns are scary” is a statement we as a culture long ago agreed on, so how do you make a modern clown that’s set apart from the rest of the scary pack? If you’re Damien Leone’s Terrifier films, you push your clown into kills of pure comic excess, then push some more. Art the Clown is a horror standout because of his look, yes, but what really puts him over the top is the way David Howard Thornton plays him as a clown who’s always in search of the perfect gag—no matter how many corpses he has to wade through to find it. [Matthew Jackson]

After discourse around women’s reproductive rights intensified in the late 1960s, children became the scariest thing in horror. First it was Rosemary’s Baby, then The Exorcist, then The Omen. Damien Thorn, a demonic offspring swapped into a politically powerful family as a baby, followed not just horror’s infantile hellraisers—he also fed into growing disenfranchisement with the American government at the time. Countless sequels tried, but none lived up to Richard Donner’s original. [Matt Mills]

It seems impossible that the Child’s Play franchise could sustain a second iconic killer doll, but Chucky is all about doing the impossible, and therefore we got the glory that is Tiffany Valentine. Played with campy glee by the great Jennifer Tilly, Tiffany’s got both an unforgettable look and a flawless voice, not to mention a horror-comedy edge that has made her a legend in her own right, alongside Chucky himself. [Matthew Jackson]

Plato wrote that a person who could turn themselves invisible would “go about among men with the powers of a god.” Sci-fi genius H.G. Wells only intensified this sentiment with The Invisible Man, a novel about a scientist who, after becoming irreversibly see-through, goes mad with power. James Whale’s 1933 adaptation retells this tale with groundbreaking special effects, nearly 90 years before the 2020 remake used its titular villain’s invisibility as a metaphor for how abusers can mentally torment their partners. [Matt Mills]

Jason Voorhees’ mother is the ultimate horror trivia question, the twist at the end of Friday The 13th, but she also stands on her own as a remarkable slasher. Betsy Palmer only gets a few minutes to appear as the character after an hour’s worth of offscreen kills, but she makes the most of it, turning a cable-knit sweater and a wild-eyed grin into something enduring, terrifying, and thoroughly memorable. [Matthew Jackson]

By 2006, the whole “kid possessed by something supernatural” cliche had become well-worn in horror, but Orphan was able to refresh the scary child trope with a different kind of twist. Although Esther does all the creepy stuff you may expect, showing talents beyond her years and an attraction to her adopted dad, the Devil has nothing to do with it: instead, she’s a murderous adult with a disease that stops her aging. This fresh reinvention made Orphan a cult classic.[Matt Mills]

Arguably the single most frightening horror image of the last 25 years is a girl with long black hair climbing out of a well and shuffling towards an unseen camera. That’s how impactful Ringu and its subsequent American remake, The Ring, were at the turn of the century. Maybe it’s that hair, or the way her body seems composed of VHS scanlines, or the sheer force of what her presence can do to a human body. Maybe it’s all of those things. No matter the reason, she’s seared into our memories. [Matthew Jackson]

Stephen King poured all of his worst nightmares of deranged fandom into Misery, then Rob Reiner and Kathy Bates picked those nightmares up and spun them into cinematic gold. It’s been more than three decades since Bates’ Oscar-winning performance in Misery, and Annie Wilkes is still the stuff of absolute nightmares, a woman so convinced that she’s loving and caring that she’ll kill to prove it. Throw in Lizzy Caplan’s unforgettable TV interpretation in Castle Rock, and you’ve got an even more enduring horror legacy. [Matthew Jackson]

Jennifer Kent’s sleeper hit The Babadook was key in establishing the 2010s’ infatuation with “elevated horror.” The film’s titular antagonist—a top-hatted, pale-faced creature feeding off strife—is the embodiment of grief, manifested by the main character missing her dead husband and secretly resenting her son. And, like grief itself, the Babadook is never truly vanquished—instead, the best the protagonist can do is shackle him and stop him from running roughshod over her life. [Matt Mills]

The appeal of Pearl, played in both her old and her young forms by the great Mia Goth, begins with a bait and switch. We don’t expect this frail old woman whose mind lingers on her glory days as a dancer to be a savage killer, and yet that’s what we find in Ti West’s X. What really cements Pearl’s status as a horror icon, though, is that we got a prequel just months after her debut that explains where Pearl came from and how she became a killer, and it did nothing to diminish her allure or her power. In fact, it enhanced it, making Goth a living horror legend, and giving us a villain for the ages. [Matthew Jackson]

Many classic slashers buried their heads in the sand when it came to subtext, but Bernard Rose’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s The Forbidden is rooted in race and class. Tony Todd stars as an ex-slave unjustly murdered for being Black and now lingering as a vengeful spirit called The Candyman. Although everyone knows about the “say his name five times in a mirror” plot point, it’s Todd’s seductive yet scary performance that carries the film. [Matt Mills]

M3GAN is the newest creation to make this list, but her inclusion is no case of recency bias. The uncanny cyber-doll, ostensibly the ideal plaything thanks to its futuristic AI, is perfectly placed for modern audiences, given how many of us have robotic personae from Siri to Alexa controlling our homes. Inevitably, this childhood best friend from Hell goes haywire, embarking on a campy murder spree that both plays on and satirizes social media trends. [Matt Mills]

It’s a testament to the genius of Mary Shelley that her most famous creation has been testing the ethics of both readers and cinema-goers for generations. Frankenstein’s monster is a grotesque composite of cadavers rejected by Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and adaptations have made him sympathetic, evil, and everything in between. After James Whale’s 1931 classic made the monster a childlike brute, he became a vengeful intellectual (masterfully portrayed by Robert De Niro) and even an action hero. [Matt Mills]

Calling Carrie White a horror villain actually feels harsh. Sure, this psychic teenager in Stephen King’s breakthrough story killed all of her high school classmates by burning their prom hall to the ground, but those little turds had it coming. Both in the book and its cinematic adaptations, they bully this outcast ruthlessly, as does her abusive mom. Sissy Spacek’s earnest yet dramatic performance in Brian De Palma’s 1976 classic only reaffirmed Carrie as a resonant anti-bullying fable. [Matt Mills]

It’s been pointed out that Jack Nicholson looks half-crazy from the opening moments of The Shining, and that’s exactly the point of his legendary performance as Jack Torrance. With stringy hair, vacant eyes, and of course a grin that would make the Devil himself uncomfortable, Jack is a powder keg just waiting for a match, and watching Nicholson catch fire in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece is still hypnotic more than four decades later. [Matthew Jackson]

The Predator was originally a 5-foot 9-inch alien with a dog-like head. Thank God director John McTiernan returned the creature to the drawing board while filming the eponymous action-horror. Recast with 7-foot 3-inch Kevin Peter Hall and looking lean and nimble, the alien became an allegory for the Vietnam War as it lured Arnold Schwarzenegger and his squadron into the jungle to hunt the men guerrilla-style. Its invisibility and weaponry captured imaginations worldwide, and the Predator continues to massacre in sequels and Alien crossovers. [Matt Mills]

Leatherface is just a butcher who wears someone else’s skin on his face, and while that’s plenty terrifying on its own, what pushes him into pure icon territory is the absolute frenzied brutality he brings to every film. Whether it’s the docudrama realness of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the camp of the first sequels, or the gritty monstrosity of the remake era, he’s always there with his face on, ready to carve. [Matthew Jackson]

The Hell Priest affectionately known as “Pinhead” might have been scary even without his signature cranial ornaments. After all, there are other Cenobites with other mutilations in the Hellraiser franchise, and they’re certainly frightening. But there’s something about those pins and the neat grid on which they’re laid out that makes this particular extra-dimensional masochist so extraordinary. Whether it’s the great Doug Bradley or his successor Jamie Clayton under that headgear, we can’t take our eyes off Pinhead, and we never will. [Matthew Jackson]

Arguably Stephen King’s most iconic creation, Pennywise the Dancing Clown from It comes from a place of relatable, almost generic fear. He’s a creepy clown who appears in locations you don’t expect a clown to be, like storm drains and sewer pipes. That’s eerie enough, but then King—and actors like Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård—take the disorienting creepiness further, revealing what we always suspected about creepy clowns: They’re cosmic monsters from beyond our world, ready to eat us all alive. [Matthew Jackson]

Hannibal the Cannibal is a ready-made great character, a sophisticated monster who leaps right off the pages of Thomas Harris’ novels and enters our nightmares. It’s no wonder that he remains such a horrific presence, but there’s a humanity behind the monstrosity that means he’s more than just someone to be feared. Whether it’s Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, or Mads Mikkelsen in Doctor Lecter’s skin, we keep watching, hoping for a glimpse of the man behind the monster. [Matthew Jackson]

It all starts with Tobin Bell’s voice. With his gruff, quiet, endlessly menacing intonations, Bell gave birth to one of the most recognizable horror villains of the 21st century, and 10 films in, Jigsaw has lost none of his edge, even in death. From the very beginning, Bell’s performance as a man with a voracious appetite for building death traps of all kinds was layered, rich, and searching, creating a human monster that we’re still fascinated with after two decades. [Matthew Jackson]

In the 1950s, horror movies sought inspiration from the stars and scientific experimentation, reflecting contemporary concerns about the space race and nuclear armament. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, however, pulled inspiration from something much more down-to-earth: the potential killer next door. With Ed Gein in the headlines just a few years prior—and inspiring the 1959 novel this film adapted—Norman Bates scarily humanized the horror villain, and his secret identity remains one of cinema’s most infamous twists. [Matt Mills]

The demonic entity of the original Exorcist (named Pazuzu in 1977’s godawful sequel) represented supernatural horror in an increasingly rational world. For more than half the film, preteen Regan MacNeil endures horrific procedures from unfeeling doctors, and mom Chris MacNeil doesn’t turn to religion until every other option’s exhausted. By that point, her possessed daughter is mutilated, rotating her head and vomiting slime in a series of putrid yet fantastic practical effects. [Matt Mills]

Introduced in the John W. Campbell novella Who Goes There?, this anonymous alien can transform into anything. 1951’s The Thing From Another World had to take liberties with that seemingly unfilmable concept, making it a plant monster, but in 1982 horror auteur John Carpenter and effects wizard Rob Bottin had the untempered creativity to pull it off. In The Thing, the baddie is a miraculous monstrosity of flailing limbs, and it still looks remarkable 40-plus years on. [Matt Mills]

Unlike many fellow slashers, Ghostface is a mask that changes wearers, motives, and methods with each passing Scream movie, and yet certain qualities always stick with us. There’s the wild, flailing way every Ghostface seems to move, the very human clumsiness that makes them topple into chairs and coffee tables, and of course, Roger Jackson’s legendary raspy voice behind every creepy phone call. It’s a package so good that it can make anyone into a slasher legend. [Matthew Jackson]

Bram Stoker’s blood-sucking creation has a long and violent history of splattering the silver screen with red. Bela Lugosi’s 1931 interpretation in Dracula remains the most iconic, his slicked-back black hair and Eastern European accent now seen as signatures of the character (they were never in the original book). Gary Oldman’s 1992 turn transformed the Nosferatu into a compelling and romantic anti-villain, while Christopher Lee’s almost-mute murderer single-handedly popularized the entire Hammer horror series. [Matt Mills]

A lot of horror villains stay the same, and that consistency is part of their appeal. But ever since he leaped out of that lake in Friday The 13th, Jason Voorhees has been in a state of evolution. He’s been a boy, a man with a bag on his head, a man in a hockey mask, an all-out monster, a zombie, a shapeshifter, and even a futuristic space killer, and yet he’s always instantly recognizable as a slasher movie legend. There’s staying power in consistency, yes, but Jason proves that even an icon can find room to grow. [Matthew Jackson]

Call it the Alien, call it the Xenomorph, call it whatever you want, just know that it’ll get you in the end. An H.R. Giger design brought to wriggling, glistening life in Ridley Scott’s Alien, this legendary creature is both recognizable the world over and still viscerally frightening to legions of sci-fi horror fans. Simultaneously able to stalk through the darkness of a spaceship like a ghost and team up with its species-mates to do battle with Marines, the Alien is scary in part because it’s adaptable, but mostly because that monstrous design lives rent-free in your head from the moment you see it. [Matthew Jackson]

Thanks to the original design of the character as an off-the-shelf “Good Guy” doll possessed by a serial killer, the murderous toy known as Chucky would have been creepy without ever saying a word. There’s just something about him, from the wide eyes to the impish grin, that makes Chucky instantly and irrevocably scary. But then along came Brad Dourif, and writer/creator Don Mancini, and Chucky became so much more than a creepy idea. He became a wise-cracking, gallows humor-loving star who’s still churning out great horror moments after 35 years on the scene. [Matthew Jackson]

Although there’s disagreement over whether or not Halloween was the first slasher film, no one can deny that Michael Myers instantly became the new archetype for the genre’s baddies. The tormentor of Haddonfield’s teens is a killer devoid of his humanity: mute, ruthless, and concealed by a plain white mask, he can’t be reasoned with. Either he kills you or you kill him—and, given he’s also bulletproof, the latter is not going to happen. [Matt Mills]

If you break Freddy Krueger down into parts, he maybe shouldn’t work. You’ve got the fedora, the striped sweater, the burned face, the knife glove, and a mythology that gets more convoluted and strange with each installment of A Nightmare On Elm Street. It feels like too much, but then Robert Englund comes along and embraces that over-the-top, jam-packed feeling, and Freddy becomes a legend. The simple idea of a villain that can kill you in your dreams was powerful enough for director Wes Craven to launch an entire horror universe, but it’s Englund’s gleeful, relentless horror-comedy onslaught that makes Freddy Krueger our favorite horror villain of all time. [Matthew Jackson]

With nearly 100 years of horror film history to scour through, there’s no way every movie monster or maniac could make our Top 40. Sadly, much like their many unlucky victims, some of them had to get cut. But here, we salute the horror villains who didn’t make our final list, but came oh so close.

Annabelle (The Conjuring universe)

Brundlefly (The Fly, 1986)

The Collector (The Collector/The Collection)

Victor Crowley (Hatchet franchise)

The Entity (It Follows)

Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde

Otis Driftwood (House Of 1000 Corpses/Devil’s Rejects franchise)

Jane (What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?)

Leprechaun (Leprechaun franchise)

Lipstick-Face Demon (Insidious franchise)

The Miner (My Bloody Valentine)

The Phantom (Phantom Of The Opera)

Pumpkinhead (Pumpkinhead franchise)

Sil (Species)

The Tall Man (Phantasm franchise)