Targeting unborn babies, surviving shotgun blasts, and devouring everyone in sight: the horror movie villains of 2023 are quite a lineup. Here are the most powerful ones thus far.
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00:00 Targeting unborn babies, surviving shotgun blasts, and devouring everyone in sight,
00:05 the horror movie villains of 2023 are quite a lineup.
00:09 Here are the most powerful ones thus far.
00:11 At this point in the Scream franchise,
00:14 it's well known that Ghostface isn't a single individual,
00:16 but rather a moniker passed down from serial killer to serial killer.
00:20 Regardless of who is the actual murderer or murderers,
00:24 in each new edition, they're always wearing the same trademark mask and black robes.
00:29 Scream 6 is part of the larger series that began way back in 1996,
00:33 but it's mainly a follow-up to 2022's Scream,
00:36 and its version of Ghostface is spawned as a direct result of the events of that previous film.
00:41 As far as horror villains go, the Ghostface killers are, as always,
00:45 held back by the fact that at the end of the day, they're just ordinary people wearing a Halloween costume.
00:50 No superpowers, no supernatural abilities,
00:53 just a revolving door of sociopaths with various grievances to air.
00:56 So while this version of Ghostface, or Ghostfaces, still racks up an impressive body count,
01:01 they can't really compete with some of the other baddies from 2023.
01:05 "Can you hold, please?"
01:07 "Huh?"
01:08 Do you remember in 2018's Christopher Robin when a grown-up version of the title character
01:12 played by Ewan McGregor returns to the Hundred Acre Wood?
01:15 He then finds his former companions melancholy and lost,
01:18 never understanding why he left them behind in the first place.
01:21 Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey is kind of a riff on that,
01:24 only instead of Pooh and his friends becoming sad and lonely,
01:27 they turn feral and homicidal.
01:29 Now that the stories of A.A. Milne are in the public domain,
01:32 there's really nothing that filmmakers can't do with them.
01:35 And the team behind Blood and Honey takes that freedom about as far as it can go.
01:39 The production itself is fairly lackluster,
01:41 failing to rise above the one-joke premise of its concept.
01:44 But the creep factor of having one of the most beloved children's book characters of all time
01:48 grow into a sadistic and vengeful killer is still difficult to shake off.
01:53 Cobweb is an atmospheric Halloween-set horror film
01:56 that was inexplicably released in the middle of the summer
01:58 on the same day as Barbie and Oppenheimer.
02:01 This underrated spooky tale revolves around a young boy named Peter,
02:04 who begins hearing tapping on his bedroom wall
02:06 and eventually a voice that calls out to him.
02:09 This turns out to be Sarah, the older sister he never knew existed.
02:12 She's been locked in the basement his entire life by their cruel parents,
02:16 and she's now seeking revenge,
02:17 first by manipulating Peter into killing Mom and Dad,
02:20 and then by turning her anger toward Peter.
02:23 When Sarah appears on screen,
02:24 we discover that she has extra sharp teeth and unnaturally long limbs
02:28 and is capable of climbing up walls.
02:30 She uses these abilities to go on a bit of a murder spree,
02:33 taking out Peter's bully and the bully's friends.
02:35 And she would have turned her malevolent gaze on Peter as well
02:38 if he hadn't managed to trap her back in the basement again.
02:41 You can feel bad for Sarah, but that won't stop her from wreaking horrific havoc.
02:45 Winnie the Pooh isn't the only bear on this list,
02:48 and this next ursine monster has the advantage of being based on a true story.
02:52 Sort of.
02:53 Cocaine Bear features a black bear consuming enough blow
02:55 to take out all of Studio 54 in its heyday.
02:58 While out of its mind on the powder,
03:00 the bear brutally attacks everyone that crosses its path.
03:03 A memorable group of colorful characters must then fight their way
03:06 through the ensuing mayhem to stay alive.
03:09 There are some film buffs who would argue that the most sinister villains
03:12 are the ones whose motivations are shrouded in mystery,
03:14 but there's also plenty to be said for the ones who have no sense of reason
03:17 attached to them and attack for no other reason
03:19 than that their victims happen to be nearby.
03:22 With that in mind, the unpredictable and brutal Cocaine Bear
03:25 is an undeniable force to be reckoned with.
03:27 "A bear did cocaine!"
03:30 There are movies that present the iconic Count Dracula
03:32 as an all-powerful supernatural being capable of charming anyone into an early grave.
03:37 But the horror comedy Renfield treats him more like a toxic boss
03:40 who claims to advocate for a healthy work-life balance
03:43 but then gets passive-aggressive when his employees actually leave the office at 5 o'clock.
03:47 Here, the focus is primarily on the title character.
03:50 He's been the dutiful manservant of the Prince of Darkness for centuries,
03:54 bringing him all the fresh bodies to snack on that a vampire could ever want.
03:58 But times have changed.
03:59 It's the 21st century, and Renfield is starting to feel like
04:01 maybe he needs to start focusing on himself and enforce some healthy boundaries.
04:06 So this interpretation of Dracula, played by Nicolas Cage as a micromanaging supervisor
04:10 of sorts, makes sense for the film.
04:12 After all, that's the context in which Renfield knows him.
04:15 However, it doesn't make for the most threatening version of the character,
04:18 especially since he's ultimately defeated by a guy who eats bugs.
04:22 There's something inherently off-putting about dolls and robots,
04:25 so to have the two blended together in the Uncanny Valley is pure nightmare fuel.
04:30 Megan is a lifelike doll with artificial intelligence
04:32 who initially behaves exactly as she's programmed to.
04:35 Her responsibility is to care for the recently orphaned Katie,
04:38 and the two quickly establish a close bond.
04:40 Perhaps too close.
04:42 Those around Katie, particularly her aunt Gemma,
04:45 start to worry about her emotional attachment to the doll,
04:47 as well as Megan's tendency to eliminate any perceived threat to Katie.
04:51 As a villain, Megan is on the proverbial road to hell paved with good intentions.
04:56 She's supposed to protect Katie,
04:57 and it's not exactly her fault that she overdoes it a little bit.
05:00 Nevertheless, she amasses a not insignificant body count over the course of the film,
05:04 ramping up the violence until she's willing to attack anyone who stands in her way,
05:09 even Katie.
05:10 She does a lot of damage for a child-sized doll,
05:12 and her character design, which calls back to classic horror
05:15 while also serving something fresh and unique,
05:17 makes for one of the most memorable and memeable parts of 2023.
05:21 It's insane, right?
05:23 The Boogeyman is an adaptation of a short story by Stephen King,
05:26 so right away there's a strong chance that it'll at least have a decent bad guy.
05:30 Revolving around two young sisters who have recently lost their mother,
05:33 the film uses the device of the classic childhood monster
05:36 as a metaphor for grief and trauma.
05:39 But of course, since this is a Stephen King story,
05:41 the monster manifests in physical form.
05:43 It then wreaks havoc on the lives of the girls and their father,
05:46 a psychiatrist who's too shaken up by his wife's death to pay attention to his daughters.
05:51 Within the construct of the story,
05:52 the Boogeyman is a creature who turns up in emotionally devastated households
05:55 and feeds off traumatic experiences and parental neglect.
05:59 There's something especially creepy about a monster who specifically targets children.
06:03 On the other hand, he can be defeated by a strong light source,
06:06 so he loses a lot of points for his lack of durability.
06:09 It's debatable whether or not the lipstick-based demon
06:12 is at his scariest in Insidious The Red Door,
06:14 or if he's just coasting on the strength of his genuinely terrifying appearance
06:17 in the original Insidious.
06:19 Although he has an all-time great character design,
06:22 it's hard to deny the fact that every time we see him,
06:24 he's a little less effective,
06:25 and his jump scares are a little less jumpy.
06:28 By the time he turns up in The Red Door,
06:30 the camera has a tendency to linger on him for a bit too long,
06:33 making us more aware of the fact that it's a man in makeup
06:35 and not actually a horrifying demon monster.
06:38 But although he suffers from diminishing returns,
06:40 the lipstick-faced demon is still one of the scariest horror villains around.
06:44 That's thanks to his ability to trap someone deep in their subconscious,
06:47 along with other spirits who are trying to re-enter the world of the living
06:50 by taking over their body.
06:52 Sure, he hasn't ever actually fully succeeded,
06:54 and he's currently trapped behind a painted shut door,
06:57 but he still deserves recognition for the terrifying effort.
07:01 The second Dracula film released in 2023,
07:03 The Last Voyage of the Demeter features a much more threatening version
07:06 of the bloodsucker than Renfield.
07:08 When the crew of the titular ship set sail for England from Romania,
07:12 they have every reason to expect a smooth journey.
07:14 The mysterious client paying them to transport a bunch of crates
07:17 has even offered a bonus to encourage them to reach London in a timely manner.
07:22 But when crew members start being viciously killed every night,
07:24 they quickly change their focus to just making it back alive.
07:27 "We're a doomed crew, Mr. Clemens."
07:30 Although the film itself suffers from slow pacing,
07:32 and the fact that it's built around what some consider to be
07:34 the most boring section of Bram Stoker's novel,
07:37 it still offers up the malevolent vampire in his classic form.
07:41 This Dracula is no debonair society figure,
07:43 winning over his victims with his smooth demeanor and dulcet tones.
07:46 Instead, he's far more animalistic and feral
07:49 as he relentlessly rips his way through the crew
07:51 with almost no trouble at all.
07:54 From a certain perspective, religious orders can be kind of creepy.
07:57 Most nuns are just harmless women devoted to their faith,
07:59 but every once in a while, you get one who's possessed by a demon.
08:02 We first met Valak, the demon nun, in 2016's "The Conjuring 2"
08:06 when she was busy tormenting the Warrens.
08:08 Since then, she's starred in her own spinoff film
08:10 as well as a 2023 sequel to that spinoff.
08:13 As far as supernatural entities in horror films go,
08:16 Valak is the real deal.
08:18 A demon originally appearing in the grimoire "The Lesser Key of Solomon,"
08:21 the character has a legacy that dates back hundreds of years.
08:24 In "The Nun," Valak displays some possession skills
08:27 and a general ability to unleash evil.
08:29 As for "The Nun 2," the intensity is ramped up
08:31 as the demon goes on a hunt for the eyes of St. Lucy.
08:35 With an unforgettable character design, possession skills,
08:37 and all the spookiness of the ancient Catholic Church,
08:40 Valak's got it all.
08:41 "You don't know what happened at St. Carta."
08:44 The plot of the offering begins with a man named Arthur
08:46 and his pregnant wife, Claire, visiting his estranged father in Brooklyn.
08:50 Arthur is the wayward son of a strict Hasidic family
08:52 who has spent his adult life separate from the traditions and rituals of his home.
08:56 So there's bound to be some tension when he reappears,
08:59 but there's more than just family drama to contend with.
09:02 To protect his wife, Arthur has to face off against the demon Abizu,
09:05 who is said it sights on their unborn child.
09:08 Like Valak, Abizu has a long history.
09:10 She's a demon associated with miscarriages and infant death,
09:13 but in the offering, her scariest skill is her ability to distort reality
09:17 as she takes on the appearance of people that her victims trust
09:20 in order to pursue her evil agenda.
09:23 And a particularly dark ending cements Abizu's legacy
09:25 as one of the most chilling supernatural villains of the year.
09:30 In "Evil Dead Rise," Alyssa Sutherland plays Ellie,
09:32 a single mother of three children.
09:34 When her teenage son Danny uncovers a recording of the Naturam Damanto,
09:38 things go downhill for the residents of their apartment building very quickly,
09:41 especially after Ellie is possessed by a Deadeye
09:44 and becomes committed to the idea of killing her entire family.
09:48 Beyond the supernatural elements, there's something especially unnerving
09:51 about a mother ruthlessly and gleefully attacking her own children.
09:55 She's mercilessly violent, and even losing her arm and leg
09:58 to a shotgun blast doesn't stop her.
10:00 And do we even need to mention the part where she fuses
10:02 with her two Deadeye children, turning into the even scarier Deadeye Marauder?
10:07 All of the other 2023 horror villains can pack up their butcher knives
10:10 and scary claws and go home, because Mommy's here.
10:13 "Mommy's with the maggots now."
10:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
10:19 (upbeat music)