Editorials
Pacino, Goldblum and Black Phillip: 10 Great Portrayals of the Devil in Horror
Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, the Devil – whatever you call him, there are few recurring representations of evil as powerful or as fear-inducing as the ruler of hell.
For as long as film has existed the Devil has been a fixture of horror, which means over a hundred years of depictions. Over a century worth of cinematic incarnations means he’s been everything from a fork-tongued, cloven-hooved beast to offspring of powerful anti-matter ruler.
But for all of his countless appearances in horror, these 10 portrayals are sinfully the best.
The Devil’s Advocate – Al Pacino
Pacino’s rendition of John Milton, aka Satan, is pure scene-chewing melodrama. For most of the film, Milton is a bombastic leader of a high-end law firm, working hard to tempt Keanu Reeves’ Kevin Lomax with money, power, and lust. Unadulterated smarm and charisma, Pacino’s version of the Devil is far more outgoing than many of his other onscreen iterations. Of course, all of that pales in comparison to the final act, when Milton reveals that not only is he Kevin’s Satanic dad, but that he wants Kevin and his half-sister to conceive the Antichrist. Because nothing says welcome to the family like incest. Pacino ramps up his performance to eleven here, delivering devilish monologues with over-the-top gusto.
The Witch – Black Phillip
For the family at the center of this period set horror film, being banished from a Puritan colony is only the beginning of their problems. Isolated and alone, they’re vulnerable to the darkness lurking in the nearby woods. A witch. First baby Samuel is stolen by the witch to be ground down into a flying unguent. Then eldest son Caleb is seduced by her, sending him into subsequent madness. In turn, the surviving family members descend into paranoia and chaos, each blaming the other for their ills. No one suspects that the family goat, Black Phillip, was Satan in disguise, manipulating the family all along. No need to be afraid of a neighboring witch when the Devil’s hanging around your yard.
Prince of Darkness – Susan Blanchard
Technically, for a good chunk of the film anyway, Satan is depicted as a large cylinder of swirling green goo. Thanks to John Carpenter’s interest in theoretical physics, which lead to his combining Satan with the concept of anti-matter, this iteration of Satan is the liquid offspring of an even bigger evil – Anti-God. When a group of academics come to study the mysterious stuff in the basement of a church, those exposed become possessed by it, who then bring the cylinder to the chosen physical vessel; a sleeping Kelly (Susan Blanchard). Gnarly and disfigured, the new Kelly is powerful and creepy, but her sole purpose now is to herald in her much more powerful daddy from the other realm.
Constantine – Peter Stormare
Supernatural detective John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) has managed to piss Lucifer off bad enough that he’s the only soul Lucifer would come topside to collect personally. So, when things hit the proverbial fan, John slits his wrists as a means of manipulating Lucifer into intervening with Gabriel’s nefarious plans. If you want your film’s depiction of Lucifer to be memorable, then you hire Peter Stormare. His few small scenes pack a punch; his take on Lucifer is venomous, magnetic, and a little bit unhinged. Stormare plays Lucifer with a malevolent glee.
Tales from the Hood – Clarence Williams III
For the trio of drug dealers taking refuge in a funeral home, they find more than they bargained for with the eccentric owner, Mr. Simms (Williams III). He regales them with four tales of terror before turning the tide on the criminals. Mr. Simms isn’t really a funeral home director; he’s Satan himself come to usher these boys to Hell. Williams is delightfully campy as Simms, the manic energy increasing with each tale, until it explodes in the final reveal. “This ain’t no funeral home! It ain’t the Terror Dome, neither! Welcome to Hell, motherfuckers!”
The Prophecy – Viggo Mortensen
There’s a simplicity in The Prophecy’s version of Lucifer that makes him all the more terrifying. Dressed in black and soft-spoken, this Lucifer doesn’t exactly look threatening at first glance. But Mortensen imbues the first fallen angel with a menace unlike any other portrayal before. His soft-spoken, calm demeanor as he utters lines like, “I can lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother’s feces, or we can talk” is unsettling. Mortensen plays Lucifer with such apathetic disdain toward humans, his body language relaxed, that it communicates a sense of immense power in a way that’s far more sinister and effective than flashy demonstrations and boisterous performances.
Mister Frost – Jeff Goldblum
Mr. Frost is a serial killer arrested and sent to a mental asylum after confessing to multiple murders. He doesn’t speak for two years, and the police aren’t able to discover his identity. He breaks his vow of silence to claim his identity as Satan to one of the doctors, along with his intent to trick her into murdering him. As the title implies, Goldblum plays his sadistic serial killer with icy intelligence. Calm, cool, and cunning, Goldblum makes for one unnerving Devil.
Angel Heart – Robert De Niro
Angel Heart is a horror movie disguised as a noir mystery thriller. De Niro plays Louis Cyphre, a man who hires private investigator Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) to track down a singer named Johnny Favorite. The investigation leads Harry down one hellish web of deceit, death, and horror. Louis Cyphre is a homophone for Lucifer, who’s playing poor Harry like a fiddle. One of De Niro’s best performances of all time, his take on Lucifer is as regal as it is creepy. Seriously. You’ll never look at hardboiled eggs the same way.
The Wailing – Jun Kunimura
After the arrival of a Japanese stranger in a mountainous village of South Korea, a mysterious illness begins to spread. One of the symptoms is a homicidal rage. A bumbling cop is drawn further into the investigation when his own daughter is stricken with the illness. That’s the simplified version of the plot, which becomes increasingly more complex as it progresses. While the narrative toys with science versus religion behind the mysterious illness for most of the run time, ramping up the dread in the process, the final scenes are pure horror. The Japanese-speaking deacon who aided the police as investigator comes across the stranger in a cave, in the aftermath of absolute anarchy. That stranger reveals himself to have been a soul-stealing Devil all along, and it’s downright unsettling.
Legend – Tim Curry
What happens when you combine the talents of legendary special makeup effects artist Rob Bottin (The Thing) with an iconic performance by Tim Curry? You end up with one of the best iterations of the Lord of Darkness of all time. Ridley Scott’s dark fantasy may have starred Tom Cruise as the naïve hero Jack, out to save his lady love from the Lord of Darkness’ clutches, but he was upstaged by Curry at every possible turn. “What is light without dark? What are you without me? I am a part of you all. You can never defeat me. We are brothers eternal!” Indeed, Darkness. Indeed.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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