When it comes to the world of horror, the monsters and villains that aim to raise the body count aren’t always the best for the job. For every biological nightmare or ancient awakened evil, there is a murderous evil snowman or a beloved children’s character that has been turned to horror due a lapse in copyright protection. It might make for an entertaining movie and a good waste of time, but sometimes you have to laugh at the level of disbelief you’re required to suspend to treat a leprechaun as a deadly threat. Just because you’ve been the focus in nine sequels and a TV series doesn’t mean you’re a terrifying villain. It does mean you’re ripe for a spot on this list, however.
After some deep soul searching and research, we’ve determined a few choices for the worst horror movie villains. We’re not talking about horror villains that are ineffective or easily defeated by their tentative victims. These wannabe killers and monsters have succeeded quite a few times, or they at least keep coming back for more. Instead, we want to focus on villains that fell flat or ventured too far into the black hole of comedy.
1) Ahmanet – The Mummy (2017)
2017 saw Tom Cruise kick off and immediately conclude Universal’s new Dark Universe with The Mummy. Taking the classic Universal monsters and crafting a shared universe seems like a good idea amid Marvel’s success, but this movie managed to kill all momentum upon its release. Cruise dropped a very rare L on the big screen, while Sofia Boutella as Princess Ahmanet falls flat due to too much plot and the need for the film to introduce a ton of little details for the larger shared universe. Instead of just having Cruise somehow take on the supernatural as a U.S. Army sergeant, the Prodigium secret society needs screen time, Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll has to show off, and there needs to be a cliffhanger. Boutella’s mummy is a bit toothless and a bit rushed, never really getting the chance to be the world-ending threat she’s made out to be.
2) Jack Frost – Jack Frost
The 1997 horror black comedy Jack Frost is much different than the Michael Keaton family film that would hit theaters one year later. This Jack Frost is a serial killer who is set to be executed, but manages to become fused with snow after a chemical accident, turning him into a murderous snowman. A fun movie follows, where the snowman goes on a Christmas-themed killing spree, including the infamous scene where American Pie‘s Shannon Elizabeth is killed in a tub after Jack has turned himself into her bathwater. He turns back into snow, apparently sexually assaults her with his carrot nose, and then beats her against the walls until she’s dead. Reading that back, you might think Jack Frost crosses the line, but you’d be wrong. It’s one of the more cartoonish-looking murders, all while weird surfing music plays.
3) Roman Bridger/ Mickey Altieri – Scream 2 and Scream 3
These choices could be poor ones, but we’re willing to risk saying the killers in the first pair of Scream sequels undermine their Ghostface slayings after have been unmasked at the end of the movies. While the first movie’s reveal is one of the best in slasher history, the sequels offer diminishing returns and silly motivations. Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) wants to be arrested for the murders, to wallow in the fame. Sure, he’s being used by Billy Loomis’ mother (Laurie Metcalf) and her desires for revenge, but his motivations just seem stupid.
Luckily, he’s outdone by Scream 3‘s baddie, Roman Bridger. He donned the Ghostface mask and aimed to kill Sydney Prescott because she was his half-sister and to frame him for the murders. He’s also revealed to be the spark behind the Loomis murders from the first film. Bridger is set to return in the next film, somehow, but he dies pretty clearly in this one, so things might get a bit crazy.
4) Pamela Voorhees – Friday the 13th
The murderer’s reveal from the first Friday the 13th film is memorable for several reasons. Jason Voorhees would become the main stalker killer in the numerous sequels that would follow, but the first film always belongs to his mother. Played by Betsy Palmer in the film, she doesn’t reveal herself until the very end, chasing Alice across the camp and trying to get her with her trusty machete. Palmer is great as the crazy, tortured mother of Jason, but once you start to piece together the murders in the film, you have to wonder how an elderly woman managed to sneak around and murder the teens at the camp. She sometimes throws their dead bodies through windows or hangs them to a door using arrows. It’s an ending I’m torn on because the movie is good. She’s just not the reveal you’re hoping to see.
5) Santa Claus – Santa’s Slay
Another repeat figure in horror is Santa Claus, or people dressed up like Santa Claus during the holiday. Many of the portrayals have been memorable for being pretty bad, like Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, but the one movie that comes to mind is Santa’s Slay with Bill Goldberg as Santa. In this movie, Santa is a supernatural being born from a virgin birth made possible by Satan. He was using Christmas to slaughter people until 1005 A.D., when he was defeated by an angel and sentenced to deliver gifts for 1,000 years. Now he’s back to kill more, though his ending is left wide open because evil Santa, who is the spawn of Satan, closes the film by catching a flight to the North Pole after his powers leave him after Christmas. Watch for the star-studded opening scene and then find a way out.
6) Jason Voorhees’ Heart – Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
We would take several movies with Pamela Voorhees as the main villain if it meant we never had to go through the events of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. By this point, Jason Voorhees has been killed, revived, and assumed killed several times over on the big screen. So it seems like par for the course when this movie opens up. But then Jason is blown apart by a grenade launcher, and the whole movie is turned into a supernatural possession movie where the murderer’s heart is devoured by the coroner and allows Jason to possess his body, along with others later in the film. By the end, he’s dragged to hell after his body returns, with Freddy Krueger planting the seeds for their crossover at the end of the movie.
7) Plants – The Happening
There is a way to create a horror situation with plants, like 2008’s The Ruins, The Happening manages to take the worst possible route to make them a terror. In M. Night Shyamalan’s 2007 thriller, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel star as a couple at the center of an apparent bioterror attack that forces people to commit suicide. But it isn’t a real bioterror attack, as it is later revealed. Instead, it is the plants themselves attacking, as a defense mechanism against humans after years of abuse. I support the plants in their goal, but the execution is pretty crazy.
8) The Government – A lot of Movies
Nothing is more evil than a government run by despots, or one secretly experimenting on the population. But in today’s world, blaming the government or making them the villain of a horror movie just manages to take some teeth away from the baddies. Discovering that the government created their monsters, or that the government is run by monsters, or even that the government has been taken over by invaders, has been a staple for a while. How many zombies are the result of experiments gone wrong? How many killers have been former soldiers pushed to the edge by the government’s decisions? In Us, the government is responsible for creating all of the evil underground doppelgangers. Elsewhere, they are behind a conspiracy to release a virus or help to spread a virus, like the events of Doomsday or I Am Legend.
9) Evil Bong
The star and villain of nine Evil Bong movies, the Evil Bong menaces innocent stoners and other people just trying to get through their day. It sends victims to Bong World, where they are attacked by twisted versions of the patrons at a strip club within the world. The bong, Eebee, hopes to turn the world’s air into pot smoke and fill the oceans with bong water. Why not make everybody tired and nappy while we’re at it? 20 years later, they are still producing Evil Bong movies, with Puppet Master creator Charles Band directing.
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