Editorials
What Makes a Horror Villain Interesting?
About a week ago, I wrote a post titled “It’s Time We Admit That Jason Voorhees is a Boring Character“, where I made the argument that the Friday the 13th villain wasn’t developed well nor was he the type of character that inspired any reaction aside from “Cool! He’s gonna kill people!” The post generated well over a hundred comments, many of which were less than pleasant towards me, which is something I fully expected and have no problem with.
However, it made me realize that there needs to be a broader discussion about horror characters, specifically villains, in general and what we should expect from them. After all, while horror is great when it brings a body count, the really memorable moments aren’t the kills but the killers themselves. In order for that to happen, the villains have to be memorable and they have to give us reason to want to return to them.
So let’s talk about interesting characters, shall we? Let’s figure out what are the kinds of villains we like and, far more importantly, why we like them.
I’d like to start with Dr. Hannibal Lecter because he’s such a widely recognized character, especially with NBC’s ill-fated TV series. His introduction in The Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite villain introductions ever, especially because we get a taste (no pun intended) of his horrific deeds before we even see his face. Jack Crawford warns Clarice Starling about his ability to manipulate and deceive, saying she doesn’t want Hannibal Lecter inside her head. Then Dr. Chilton shows her photographs of a nurse that was assaulted by Lecter, supposedly destroying her face. We see none of these photos. We don’t even know what he looks like up until Starling walks down that hallway and the camera exposes us to him, standing like a statue amidst his beautiful drawings.
What we end up witnessing is a character who is urbane, charming, well-spoken, and attentive to details. But there are glimmers of his madness in everything he does. It’s the way he looks at Clarice and barely blinks. It’s how he tucks his head so that he looks at her from beneath his brow. It’s how he tries, and succeeds (although she’ll never admit it), to scare her with his notoriety and his stories. We all know the fava beans and chianti story not because of those details but because of his iconic “Ffffff” sound afterwards.
All of this is what makes Lecter so interesting and fascinating. He is obviously a terrifying monstrosity yet his presentation and writing allows him to be playful, to lull viewers into a sense of safety. It’s at those points that Lecter decides to strike, exposing his psychotic genius and revealing how much we should actually fear him. It’s because of all of that that I find myself constantly drawn to his tales.
Let’s jump to someone that’s on Jason’s level: Freddy Krueger. It’s hard to think of one without thinking of the other, especially with how much these two have been intertwined over the years.
I’ve always found Freddy to be a fascinating character, especially with how he was developed over the years. Starting with his childhood, he was a bullied and mocked kid, the story of his conception a source of great mirth to his peers. As he grew older, his own psychotic tendencies began to manifest more and more in the form of self harm and torture of small animals. From there, he began his stint as the “Springwood Slasher”, a serial killer of children.
After his arrest, the subsequent trial, and the failing of the criminal system to go by the books and follow proper protocol, Freddy’s freedom is what sent the parents of Springwood over the edge and into his territory. They trapped him in the boiler room where he killed the children and then they burned him alive.
It is that action that makes him so interesting to me. That he would cause such outrage and vitriol so as to make “normal, every day” people sink to his level and commit murder, that’s incredible. That speaks levels as to his character and the impact he has.
Of course, there’s Freddy himself, who is a delight. He’s funny, scary, conniving, deceptive, and knows how to play with his prey before he strikes. Even in the hated (rightfully so) remake, there’s a great scene where Freddy kills Jesse only to explain that once the heart stops, there is still seven minutes during which the brain remains active. He doesn’t kill simply to end a life, he kills to enjoy every second of it, to establish his dominance and power. That’s what gives him depth, more than many other villains.
I love Chucky. I really, really do. The first Child’s Play film is a classic that actually scared the crap out of me when I first watched it. It still holds up really well and the sequels are, for the most part, incredibly entertaining.
What makes him so intriguing to me is that he himself is under a deadline, of sorts. Having transferred his soul into a Good Guy doll, Charles “Chucky” Lee Ray, aka the “Lakeshore Strangler”, learns that he must do the ritual again and move his soul into the body of the first person he let know that he was alive. If he doesn’t do this, his soul will be trapped forever in the body of the doll, which will slowly become human.
As with Freddy, Chucky is witty, funny, and a hunter. He too toys with his victims and it’s not just because he’s a toy himself, it’s because he legitimately enjoys it. His delight in killing is horrifying and yet he himself is such a masterful manipulator that you can’t help but want to pal around with him a bit.
That we get to see so much of the villain and follow his path to understanding his situation and how to fix it is what makes Chucky interesting. We are forced to stay in his company, essentially being made to empathize with his predicament.
I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never seen the sequels to Psycho. I hear that some are actually really solid, so that might have to change soon. However, the original is where it’s at and I will always be in awe of how brilliantly Norman Bates is built up.
Bates is seemingly the picture perfect example of awkward innocence. He works at the motel that his mother owns because he wants to remain close to her, even though he hates what she’s become. It’s only during the above scene that we get a suspicion that there is something wrong with Norman. It’s when he leans forward and says, “You mean an institution? A madhouse?” Suddenly there is an intensity, a confidence that we haven’t seen in him until that point. The music rises sinisterly and we suddenly have a different person altogether on the screen, one that Marion Crane fears instead of treating almost like a child.
What Anthony Perkins brings to Norman is a sophisticated and nuanced performance that goes from a simpleton to a sharp and angry wordsmith that has clearly experienced pain and trauma to a deceiver and manipulator and, finally, to a broken individual, one that clearly isn’t well. It’s the performance of a lifetime and the creation of a character that still haunts viewers to this day.
What I’m saying with these examples is that time and consideration was taken into building these characters, into making them interesting. I still stand by my statement that Jason Voorhees is a boring character because the only story we have of him is that he nearly drowned as a child, somehow kept that secret from his mother, and then began killing people once his mother was killed herself. There’s nothing of substance there, nothing that we can allow ourselves to relate to.
Hell, Jason’s mother is a far more interesting character! She’s a single mother to a hydrocephalic child who loves him with all her heart. After all, he’s mommy’s special little boy. His loss pushes her to violence, to kill those that she feels robbed her of a child. That parental grief and that unwillingness to let go of her mourning and anger after so many years gives her a foundation upon which her murderous rampage is understandable, although not agreeable.
Personally, I’ve always felt that the first Friday the 13th was the strongest in the series, simply because it had an interesting villain. I’d take a new movie about Pamela any day over a new Jason flick. Well, that is unless they decide to give Jason a reason to be interesting and not just a tool that’s an extension of his mother’s rage.
Give me villains that have depth. Give me villains that have reason. Give me villains that make me question my own character as I find myself cheering them on. After all, realizing that a bit of myself can be found in someone like Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter is what’s really scary.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
You must be logged in to post a comment.