The 10 Best Horror Movie Villains Of The 2010s

A horror movie is only as compelling as its villain. The scary movies of the 2010s brought such memorable horror villains as Paimon and the Babadook.

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A horror movie is only as compelling as its villain. From Leatherface to Michael Myers to Freddy Krueger, the most beloved horror characters tend to be villains. For audiences to be terrified by a horror movie, they need a memorable, iconic, truly sinister antagonist (either a paranormal monster or a regular human or a bunch of regular people organized into a cult) to be terrified of.

Throughout the 2010s, which saw the rise of so-called “elevated horror,” horror fans were introduced to such unforgettable baddies as Paimon, Mister Babadook, and Norman Nordstrom.

10 The Moonlight Man (Gerald’s Game)

Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation Gerald’s Game begins with Jessie and Gerald, a struggling married couple, driving out to an isolated cabin to spice up their sex life. After handcuffing Jessie to the bed, Gerald has a heart attack and dies. Over the next few nights, Jessie is tormented by a shadowy figure dubbed “The Moonlight Man.”

The Moonlight Man is a perfect visual metaphor for all the inner demons and personal traumas that Jessie is forced to confront while she’s handcuffed to a bed in the middle of nowhere. Throughout the movie, Jessie keeps trying to convince herself she’s imagining him, but the film’s shocking twist ending reveals that he was an actual creep lurking around the cabin the whole time.

9 Nana & Pop Pop (The Visit)

After a couple of big-budget fantasy epics that bombed at the box office, M. Night Shyamalan went back to his low-budget horror roots with the darkly comedic “found footage” gem The Visit.

It begins with a couple of kids being sent to stay with their grandparents, who they’ve never met. After they display strange behavior like trying to put the kids in the oven and chasing them around the crawlspace, a classic Shyamalan twist reveals that the real grandparents are dead in the basement and “Nana” and “Pop Pop” are just an elderly couple who commandeered their house.

8 Paimon (Hereditary)

Ari Aster’s debut feature Hereditary was praised by some critics as this generation’s answer to The Exorcist. By that metric, Paimon is the new Pazuzu: a demon that latches onto a family and seals their horrifying fate.

Much like the MacNeils in The Exorcist, there’s nothing that Hereditary’s Graham family can do to prevent the impending horrors. It’s not a question of “if” the Grahams will succumb to possession and death at the hands of Paimon; it’s a question of “when.”

7 The Armitages (Get Out)

Jordan Peele won a much-deserved Oscar for writing his directorial debut Get Out. Peele’s script tackled the racial tensions in America through the lens of Ira Levin-style paranoia, following in the footsteps of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives.

Chris’ girlfriend’s white family seems accommodating and friendly at first, albeit guilty of a few microaggressions, but there’s a sense that something isn’t quite right. Unfortunately for Chris, he figures out their sinister intentions when it’s just too late.

6 Norman Nordstrom (Don’t Breathe)

Fede Álvarez subverted the usual formula of a home invasion thriller in his 2016 gem Don’t Breathe. As opposed to the genre’s typical framework, Don’t Breathe frames the burglars as the protagonists and the homeowner they’re trying to rob as the villain.

When they hear about a hidden bundle of legal settlement cash hidden in a blind Gulf War veteran’s house, the burglars think it’ll be easy money. What they don’t count on is that the veteran, played to haunting effect by Stephen Lang, is a cold-hearted killer who’s ready to turn the tables on them.

5 Mister Babadook (The Babadook)

Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut The Babadook wasn’t a huge box office success when it was first released, but it was quickly recognized by critics – and later by audiences – as a masterpiece of psychological horror.

The story concerns a widow whose six-year-old son becomes disturbed by a supernatural entity hiding within the pages of a pop-up book. Mister Babadook has a truly horrifying appearance: he’s tall, slender, lives in the shadows, and has long claws for hands.

4 It (It)

Technically, the titular paranormal entity in It isn’t a horror villain from the 2010s, because Stephen King’s source novel was published way back in 1986. But Andy Muschietti’s movie adaptation brought It to life in spectacular fashion.

Bill Skarsgård gives an unforgettably unnerving performance as It’s most commonly used form: Pennywise the Dancing Clown. As a supernatural being that manifests itself as its chosen target’s worst fears, It is the ultimate boogeyman.

3 Kevin Wendell Crumb (Split)

After The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan continued his post-After Earth hot streak (and return to low-budget horror) with Split, a harrowing psychological thriller about three young women who are held captive by Kevin Wendell Crumb, a disturbed man with dissociative identity disorder and 23 distinct personalities.

Crumb is a mesmerizing on-screen presence, thanks to a breathtaking performance by James McAvoy, who seamlessly switches between personalities and draws the audience into the reality of each one.

2 The Hårga Cult (Midsommar)

Ari Aster proved he wasn’t a one-trick pony when he followed up Hereditary with Midsommar, a breakup movie wrapped in a Wicker Man-style folk horror opus. The members of the Hårga cult that Dani and Christian visit in Sweden initially seem friendly, but ominous signs begin to show that they’re not as warm and affable as they first seem.

They keep passing around hallucinogenic drugs so their victims will lose their grip on reality. One tourist who decries the cult’s traditions is mysteriously never seen again. Eventually, of course, it’s revealed that this cult’s proud traditions include a bunch of sadistic death rituals.

1 Red (Us)

Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out, Us, may not have enjoyed the same success with Academy voters. But with its red pajama-clad doppelgangers leaving their underground tunnels behind and invading the surface world, it’s certainly an entertaining ride. Like all her co-stars, Lupita Nyong’o plays dual roles. She plays Adelaide, the protagonist, and Red, the antagonist who leads the Tethered’s blood-soaked revolution against the surface-dwellers.

While she’s introduced as a sadistic killer, Red turns out to be surprisingly sympathetic when the twist ending finally reveals what happened in the hall-of-mirrors prologue and challenges the concept of a “hero” and “villain.”

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/best-horror-movie-villains-2010s/