It’s fair to say that moviegoers are predisposed to dislike most movie villains, because of course, the entire point is that they serve as a towering obstacle to the hero and their mission. And while there are varying degrees of movie villainy, every so often a filmmaker manages to come up with an antagonist so diabolically evil that the audience instantly harbours a visceral, fast-boiling hatred of them.
To be clear, this goes beyond mere dislike; we loathe these villains with every fiber of our being as though they actually did something to us personally. As a result, we can’t wait to see them get their just desserts at film’s end, which most of them thankfully do.
It takes a creative mind and some great casting to deliver villains this irredeemably awful, from abusive maniacs to raging psychopaths, religious fanatics, and folks who’d probably sell their own kin down the river to make a profit.
The following 10 horror movie villains left the audience chomping at the bit to see them horribly, violently dispatched – a consequence of how little basic human decency each one showed throughout.
Leigh Whannell’s reimagining of The Invisible Man did a fantastic job of filtering classic Universal Monster sensibilities through a contemporary, topical lens, as deranged villain Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) spends the movie stalking and abusing his ex-girlfriend Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss).
What makes Adrian even more detestable than your average abusive a**hole is that, after Cecilia leaves him, he fakes his own death and uses his optics technology to invisibly terrify her with total plausible deniability – given that he’s apparently dead and all.
Adrian makes Cecilia look increasingly insane to everyone around her, even killing her sister in front of her and framing her for it. Basically, it’s the ultimate, most horrifyingly heightened form of gaslighting imaginable. And though Adrian is largely invisible, Whannell deserves enormous credit for casting an actor with such a wonderfully punchable face – Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s maddening performance evokes privileged smugness from every pore, such that audiences can’t wait for him to finally get what’s coming to him.
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