WHAT MAKES A GOOD VILLAIN?

Most horror films have a villain of some type. But what is it that makes a good villain?

These are some of the key traits I think a horror villain needs to have/be to really put an audience on the edge of their seats:

The best villains have little to no weakness. There's no point in having a villain that's easy to defeat. I mean imagine if Michael Myers never came back after the first time he was "killed". It would be a pretty short franchise. Its no good having a villain who is easy to get rid of, or the film would be over within minutes. The villain needs to be someone who can't even be stopped by death, or at least by what would kill normal people. I mean, what kind of person can survive being decapitated? Michael Myers.

(Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, 1998)

The villain also needs to be smart. They're often very cunning and manage to avoid getting caught, and if they do get caught, they tend to escape. What good is a villain that's stuck in prison? They're not exactly a big threat behind bars. And if they weren't smart it would be easy to catch them and stop whatever chaos they were causing.

Dr Hannibal Lecter was a very smart villain in Silence Of The Lambs and it's sequels. He was smart enough to escape a maximum security prison in Silence Of The Lambs, where he literally had his own guards.

I think what makes him even scarier is the fact that there would be no chance of outsmarting him. If he wanted to kill Clarice, he could have done so, and probably quiet easily, and she's an FBI agent. If she can get killed, what chance do the rest of us have...

(Silence Of The Lambs, 1991)

The villain needs to be powerful. Again, if they weren't powerful, they'd be easy to stop and the film wouldn't be very interesting. Paranormal villains are normally very powerful, how do you stop something that's not from this world? I'd suggest calling Ed and Lorraine Warren. The villains in all of those films are very powerful and difficult to stop, in fact in some cases, the villain isn't completely stopped, but just contained. For example; the Annabelle doll. One villain to me which jumps out at being one of the most powerful horror villains is The Nun.

(The Nun, 2018)

The last one for me is fear factor. There is no point in having a villain that isn't scary, I mean imagine having a pink fluffy unicorn as the villain of a horror film. It wouldn't be very intimidating. Fear factor is key to getting an audience to even watch the horror film. Fear factor can be used for the villain in many ways, weather it's make up, sharp teeth or even a mask. All villains tend to have something which boosts their fear factor.

(The Purge, 2013)