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In some films with multiple villains, the threat is an anonymous horde: armed psychopaths who are identical save for the style of their masks. Others characterization their villains a deeply as possible, making each a unique threat. Whatever the approach, the result is the same. When horror wears so many faces, there is no escaping its gaze.
10 The Purge
At the core of the social critique within The Purge is a simple question: what would one’s neighbors do if everything were permitted? The villain in The Purge is the American people as a whole. For the one day a year when laws are lifted and murder reigns supreme, every citizen who wishes to act out their basest and most violent urges can do so with impunity.
The backstory behind the film’s eccentric cast of masked murderers is beside the point. They may not have the longevity of Dracula, but they don’t need to. What matters is that they could be anyone, that they are everyone.
9 Saw II
Throughout the franchise, Saw spins a convoluted web, doubling back on itself, flashing forward, and eating its own tail with a series of never-ending clues. At the heart of this web is John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, obsessed with torturing those that, by his judgment, do not value their lives.
At this point, everyone should know this is not a horror film where no one dies. In the second film, viewers discover that John is not alone in his work. He is being aided by Amanda Young, a survivor of one of John’s first traps. Others join and carry on John’s work as the series progresses so that even long after the Jigsaw Killer is dead, his grim mission continues to advance.
8 The Strangers
Home invasion horror is a nasty breed, playing on the real and terrifying possibility of being stalked and attacked in the place where one should feel safest. The Strangers approaches this subject matter better than almost any film in the subgenre, featuring a trio of masked killers whose most disturbing trait is the utter aimlessness of their motive. The film serves up stalking sequences that leave no spine unchilled, and by the finale, viewers could be forgiven for peeking under their beds and in their closets before going to sleep. There’s a reason The Strangers is one of the scariest films of its kind.
7 The Cabin In The Woods
The Cabin in the Woods has more active villains than a dozen other horror movies put together. The monsters kept by the Facility include the Alien Beast, Clowns, Dismemberment Goblins, Deadites, Dolls, Giant Snake, Sasquatch, Merman, and Sugarplum Fairy, to name only a handful. These monsters are used in a ritual to appease even larger, Lovecraftian creatures known as the Ancient Ones. Given that the Facility is setting these creatures loose on unsuspecting teenagers, the entire Facility organization can also be considered villains. Wherever one looks in The Cabin in the Woods, there are villains as good as those from some of the best horror shorts.
6 Hellraiser
Based on Clive Barker’s novel The Hellbound Heart and later expanded with The Scarlet Gospel, Hellraiser introduced moviegoers to the Hell Priest (popularly known as Pinhead) and the other Cenobites. These entities conflate pleasure and pain, and they wear their devotion to their hellish practices on their skin, with hooks, chains, and flayed flesh as prominent motifs.
The Cenobites already loomed large in horror, in large measure because of their unforgettable appearances, and Pinhead’s addition to Dead by Daylighthas only brought more attention to this band of killers and torturers. Of all the villainous groups, the Cenobites are not only one of the most visually distinct but also have some of the best death scenes.
5 Scream
Forget the sea of parodies. Forget the sea of imitations. Scream is arguably Wes Craven’s best work, a staggering claim given that he directed no less iconic a horror film than A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the praise is warranted.
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After helping to invent and popularize the slasher tropes with his Freddy films, Craven turns those tropes against the audience by playing on their expectations. Scream is a funny, exquisitely paced, tongue-in-cheek romp through the special hell that is knowing the rules of slasher films and being damned by that knowledge. The dance around the truth of killers’ identities is meticulous, the final reveal a gut punch.
4 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Their first appearance might date back to the 70s, by the Sawyer family from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains as terrifying as the best modern slashers. Leatherface is the most famous, but everyone in his despicable family is as crazed and violent an outsider as he is. Drayton, Nubbins, and Grandpa are rendered in disturbing detail despite their limited screentime.
The dinner scene in particular is nightmare incarnate, blending brilliant staging and direction with acting from all the film’s baddies. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn’t overexplain how its twisted family became twisted: it simply puts victims in front of them and lets chaos ensue.
3 The Silence Of The Lambs
Based on the Thomas Harris novel of the same name, The Silence of the Lambs features a pair of astounding villains: Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill. Lecter may help Clarice and the FBI, but no one thinks it’s out of the goodness of his heart. He is utterly self-serving and calculating, only interested in leveraging Bill’s murderous rampage to facilitate his own escape.
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Bill remains a fascinating albeit problematic character. The contrast between the seedy and dysfunctional style of Buffalo Bill and the chilling and mannered style of Hannibal provides a luscious balance. Watching Clarice struggle to cope with not one but two sociopaths gives the film a dynamic tension it would not otherwise have.
2 Us
A psychological horror movie like no other, Us is director Jordan Peele’s second horror feature, and it is no less accomplished than his first. The reveal of villains’ true nature in Us is so phenomenal that it’s best not to spoil it here. What matters is the villains in Us are many, unique, and have the benefit of being played by first-rate talent.
Us is a film replete with images that brand themselves on the viewer’s consciousness, including a Hands Across America moment that condenses everything terrifying about Us’s villains and everything iconic about Peele’s directorial style into a single shot. In just two horror movies, Peele proved himself an expert at assembling whole monstrous teams to frighten and dismay.
1 Get Out
The horror in most films sputters out when the director tries to imbue every element with symbolism and social critique. Not so in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, a film that examines and attacks the ongoing plague of racism in America from every angle.
The Armitage family are some of the most despicable and upsetting villains in horror, which is staggering when one considers that the genre is home to Leatherface and the Strangers. To viewers and directors looking for the perfect demonstration of how to set up and characterize multiple villains in a short time, ensuring the slow accumulation of discomfort and dread that will never quite be shaken after, Get Out is the definitive example.
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