The real heroes of many of the best horror movies of all time are women, like Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in Halloween or Heather Langenkamp as Nancy in the freddie movies. However, not all of the greatest Scream Queens are the ones you want to root for.
While many of the most famous and scariest horror movie villains are male (or even indistinguishable by gender if we’re talking about demons), there are just as many incredible female horror movie villains who we left paralyzed with fear or running away from the screen screaming. bloody murder. Here are ten of the most essential examples, starting with the “mother” of the slasher genre.
Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th)
The hockey masked face of the Friday 13 The movies may be Jason Voorhees, but the drowning victim magically resurrected wasn’t the one who cut up teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake in the original 1980 classic. It would be his mother, Pamela, who seeks revenge. negligent young counselors who didn’t watch her boy closely. She’s played by veteran actress Betsy Palmer – who, surprisingly, gives a maniacally convincing performance for a role she apparently accepted to fund her new car.
Margaret WhiteCarrie
At least Pamela Voorhees clearly loved her child, unlike Margaret White – played to Oscar-nominated perfection by Piper Laurie in Stephen King’s classic 1976 adaptation, Carrie. The domineering and abusive religious fanatic believes that even natural bodily processes are sinful, which is why her titular daughter (Sissy Spacek in another Oscar-nominated performance) had to learn the hard way about menstrual cycles, for which she is being punished by being locked in her prayer. bathroom. If only Margaret had tried to help Carrie during her time of need instead of denouncing her telepathic powers as witchcraft, she might not have suffered such a bitter end.
Queen Mother (aliens)
Perhaps the most vengeful mother of all horror is the woman responsible for the onslaught of terrifying creatures invading LV-426 in aliens. At the climax of James Cameron’s epic, action-packed sequel, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) risks her life when she confronts the Queen Mother, whose eggs she destroyed earlier with her flamethrower, in order to protect his surrogate daughter, Newt (Carrie Henn). Ultimately, this sci-fi classic is really about what women go through to protect their young.
Red (We)
Red, the scarier of the two characters played by Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o in We – writer and director Jordan Peele’s chilling 2019 thriller. It follows a vacationing family taunted by their downtrodden doppelgangers as part of a revolt led by Red – the only one of them with the ability to speak, if not with a hauntingly hoarse voice. Red becomes one of the few horror movie villains on this list who earns your sympathy, especially after the shocking twist at the end.
Rose Armitage (Come out)
The stunning debut of 2017 Oscar-nominated main antagonist Jordan Peele, however, is someone I have absolutely no sympathy for. At the time of the great twist of get out, photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is devastated to learn that his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), and her family are part of a plot to implant the brains of white people into the bodies of younger black people. reluctant and he is only the latest victim of his trap. The immediate shift from her loving facade to her ruthless, sociopathic personality after her true colors are revealed makes her particularly disturbing.
Samara Morgan (The Ring)
One of the most unsettling horror movie moments of all time comes from director Gore Verbinski’s 2001 English language update of Hiroshi Takahashi Japanese horror classic, Ringu. I’m referring to when Samara Morgan (Daveigh Chase) – the star of a cursed videotape that promises death to anyone who watches after seven days – emerges from chilling television to claim the life of the ex-boyfriend at the screen by Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson. The breathtaking climax scene made the ring an acclaimed hit and Samara the quintessential example of scary kids in horror movies (to put it lightly).
Esther (orphan)
I would call Esther a prime example of scary kids in horror movies if not for what we learn about her true identity at end of 2009 Orphan. Scream Queen Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard play an adopting couple who they believe to be a charming precocious 9-year-old (the brilliant Isabelle Fuhrmann) until they are plagued by increasingly gruesome events that are obviously related to this girl. Well, it turns out she’s not a girl at all, but a 33-year-old woman who uses her proportional dwarfism to infiltrate unassuming families and make their lives hell!
Jennifer Check (Jennifer’s body)
Also in 2009, we saw the release of one of the most unfairly underrated comedy-horror films of its generation and one of Megan Fox’s finest films. the Transformers star gives, arguably, his best performance as the title role of Jennifer’s body – a teenage satire written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama about a popular cheerleader turned into a powerful succubus by a satanic ritual gone south. Otherwise beautiful, but also unapologetically evil, Jennifer Check gives “man-eater” a whole new meaning when she has to feed on her male classmates to stay alive.
Rose the Hat (Doctor Sleep)
Someone who can relate to Jennifer Check is Rose the Hat, the main antagonist of Doctor Sleep – writer/director Mike Flanagan’s masterful adaptation of Stephen King’s sequel to the brilliant. She and the rest of the psychokinetic members of The True Knot achieve immortality by literally ingesting the lives of other gifted individuals like them, including children, as seen in the 2019 film’s most heartbreaking sequence featuring Jacob Tremblay. Rebecca Ferguson gives an unforgettably chilling performance as an unforgivable, power-hungry telepathic maniac.
Annie Wilkes (Misery)
Perhaps the most well-known female villain from a Stephen King adaptation would be Annie Wilkes as director Rob Reiner. Misery. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for playing the nurse who greets her favorite novelist (James Caan) after a car accident ties him up and refuses to let him go until he rewrites his latest unpublished book at his taste. This intensely dramatic, delirious, “cock-a-doody” villain is one of the first great metaphorical portrayals of toxic fandom, but still might be the scariest of them all so many years later.
I had originally considered including Regan MacNeil from The Exorcistuntil I realize that this 12 year old girl played by Linda Blair is as much a victim of the demon Pazuzu as anyone else in William Friedkin’s terrifying possession thriller. However, the women above are in control of their actions, which, arguably, makes them scarier, but, unquestionably, some of horror’s greatest antagonists have used more than a scary mask and a deadly weapon to wreak havoc. fear in the hearts of several generations. horror fans.
