What makes a good horror villain can be difficult to pin down. Is it an interesting aesthetic? A unique murder method? A propensity for quips? Or is it a combination of all three of these aspects and more? There are several iconic horror villains that combine all of these and have stood the test of time. Some continue to be scary, while others have become more of a figure of fun gaining their cult following for becoming increasingly unhinged and ludicrous as franchises go on.
It’s impossible to 100% guarantee that the horror film villain a writer creates will be an enduring icon, but there is a pretty good chance that they will have a ridiculously over-complicated background. Sometimes these backstories work to flesh out the villain and make them even more terrifying, but other times, their history just becomes complicated and confusing.
Michael Myers – Halloween Franchise
In the original movie, Michael Myers was a six-year-old child that snapped on Halloween night and stabbed his sister Judith to death. After 15 years in an institution Myers escaped and became a masked murderer intent on killing babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis.)
In the sequel, Laurie was now his long-lost sister and after “dying” at the end of Halloween 2 Myers doesn’t appear again until the fourth film. Laurie is dead but has a 9-year-old daughter called Jamie whom Michael begins to relentlessly pursue. Over the course of 3 films, it is revealed that a Druidic curse known as the Thorn, was inflicted on Myers as a child compelling him to kill his family.
From here Halloween: H20 completely disregards the previous films, Laurie is alive and ultimately kills Myers at the end of the film. Except she didn’t, as was revealed in Halloween: Resurrection when Myers returns and kills Laurie. His backstory was again changed with Rob Zombie’s reboot of the franchise where he was described as born evil, suffering child abuse, and obsessed with masks.
Once again, the story changed in the 2018 film Halloween which is a direct sequel to the original 1978 film, Laurie Strode is back and she and Michael are no longer siblings. It’s all very confusing and ultimately unnecessary.
Freddy Krueger - A Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise
Freddy Krueger debuted in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Initially, he was a serial child murderer in the town of Springwood who was caught but released on a technicality resulting in local parents burning him alive. His spirit waited to gain power until it was able to enter the dreams of local children and kill them in their sleep.
In the third film, it is revealed that Freddy was the son of a nun called Amanda who was a nurse at an insane asylum and was abducted by the worst patients and repeatedly raped, leading to the birth of Freddy and his moniker “The bastard son of a hundred maniacs.” In later films, it is also shown that he was adopted and abused by an alcoholic whom he murdered and that his initial murders were the children of people who had bullied him at school. In Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare he is also shown to have had a wife and daughter, the latter of which kills him in the finale.
In Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the fictional world of Craven’s films and real life intersect when a new film is planned but Freddy becomes a reality due to a real-world ancient entity that has taken Freddy’s form. So, Freddy is both real and not real, a wisecracking demon and a child murderer.
Jason Voorhees – Friday the 13th Franchise
Jason began life as a mentally handicapped boy, born with a physical deformity who was mercilessly bullied at summer camp before ultimately drowning due to neglect from counselors. In the first film, Jason is not the killer, his mother is but after she is killed Jason somehow comes back from the grave as a gigantic, hulking supernatural murderer wearing a hockey mask.
Initially, a fairly regular slasher villain, although with a propensity to survive mortal wounds and seemingly resurrect himself, in the fourth film Jason is resurrected, after being long dead and buried, by lightning. Now with even greater supernatural strength and invulnerability, Jason continues his killing sprees and resurrections for several films.
He is brought back to life once again by electricity, killed by toxic waste, resurrected by unexplained means, then seemingly out of nowhere can survive by passing his demon-infected heart on to others in a manner of possession. From there, Jason goes to Hell, then space in the future battles Freddy Kreuger in the dream world and the real world. Following this, the franchise was rebooted and Jason’s murderous rage was explained by his witnessing his mother being beheaded when he was a child. It’s truly hard to follow which world Jason occupies and just what the explanation for his continued existence is.
Pennywise – IT
Stephen King’s iconic sadistic, child-eating killer clown Pennywise has a long and winding backstory. When the story of IT begins for audiences and readers, begins with the Losers Club discovering that something is wrong with the town of Derry after Bill’s brother Georgie is brutally murdered. From there, the Losers Club defeats the clown only for IT to re-emerge after 27 years.
What isn’t revealed until much later in the book, and only able to be hinted at in the movie and original mini-series, is the eon-spanning existence of the creature known as Pennywise. The creature originated in a void outside of the known Universe and came to Earth via an asteroid. It stayed sleeping for millions of years until humans came and built Derry when it began its cycle of feeding every 27 years. IT is the nemesis of Maturin, the space turtle, and can only be defeated through the Ritual of Chüd. It is all extremely confusing and also links IT to King’s various other works notably, The Dark Tower series.
The Empty Man – The Empty Man
The Empty Man is a 2020 movie based on a graphic novel of the same name. At the beginning of the film, four friends are hiking in Bhutan when one of them, Paul, falls into a crevice and discovers a strange skeleton grafted to the wall. This leads to him becoming possessed and influencing one of his group to kill the others before killing herself. This takes place in 1995 and the movie then fast forwards to 2018 and follows Detective James Lasombra as he tries to solve the disappearance of a young girl.
After performing an extremely specific ritual whereby you have to find an empty bottle on an empty bridge, blow into it and think of the Empty Man, a girl goes missing and her friends also begin dying. James also begins to see what he believes to be the Empty Man and experiences hallucinations.
The real question is, what is the Empty Man? It’s revealed that Paul is still alive, in a comatose state, and is transmitting the Empty Man. It is also revealed that there is a huge cult surrounding the entity and that James isn’t real, he is a Tulpa, a new being created by the minds of the cult to be the new vessel for the Empty Man. The film is a wild and confusing ride that still keeps the origins and workings of the Empty Man as a virtual mystery.