Editorials
10 Dangerous Women in Horror From Saint Agnes
Horror has long seen women become the focus of the film, be it as the ultimate survivor or, in some cases, the cause of the terror. From Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street to Baby in The Devil’s Rejects, we’ve seen women run the gamut of characters in horror and it’s been a blast the entire time!
Here today to offer 10 examples of dangerous women in horror is UK rock band Saint Agnes. Merging 70’s influenced psych with doom-ish rock n’ roll and playing on their own hand built effects pedals, Saint Agnes has that certain unmistakeable quality that would make them perfect for a David Lynch film. They recently released their new single “Sister Electric”, which you can purchase via Bandcamp.
Head on down for their picks and let us know your favorite dangerous women in horror choices in the comments!
Let The Right One In – Eli
Tiny, cute Eli rips a swimming pool of bully’s limb from limb. Her smallness and her peculiar and sweet relationship with the lonely Oskar makes you kind of love her. What could be more deadly and dangerous than an adorable vampire?
Carrie – Carrie
Every bullied child’s fantasy scenario: turn up at prom, destroy your school and kill/maim your bullies (and everyone else).
Ex Machina – Ava
Can a Sci-fi be in a horror list? Can a robot be a woman? We’re running with it! Created by the twisted tech genius Nathan, Ava is the most developed AI humanity has seen so far. She quickly recognizes however that Caleb, her would-be rescuer, is another tool of oppression who ultimately views her as a sexual object. Ava then plays up to his fantasy of the damsel in distress and uses him (leaves him to starve to death) to win her freedom. And then, presumably, to take over the world.
Alien – Ripley
Ripley. What a woman. She fights off aliens, sticks it to the men and the man. Even when they bring her back to life and implant her with an alien queen, she still triumphs! She’s the sole survivor of three ships/planets. She dies. But then she comes back and kills even more aliens.
The Craft – Nancy Downs
Nancy quickly goes from using her powers for high school pranks to using them to kill loads of people. She’s charming, compelling and deadly. She’s like that mean friend at school who kills your boyfriend but you keep going back for more! Until you get her committed.
Suspiria – Helena Markos
Starting at a boarding school is never easy but when its founder, Helena Markos, the Mother Suspiriorum, leader of a coven and one of a triumvirate of witches hell bent on directing world events likes to murder your friends then re-animate their corpses and send them to kill you in a psychedelic freak out soundtracked by prog-rock’s Goblin it is just unbearable.
The Exorcist – Chris MacNeil
Linda Blair gets all the recognition but we actually think her mother is badass. Chris MacNeil fights for her daughter and never gives her up even though she says things like, ‘your mother sucks cocks in hell’ What’s more dangerous than a mother protecting it’s young/trying to exorcise the foul-mouthed demon inhabiting her daughter?!
The Addams Family – Wednesday Addams
Wednesday repeatedly tries to kill her brother, scalps a village and burns it to the ground and prefers homicide to boys. She’s Kitty’s personal icon.
The 50-Foot Woman – Nancy Archer
Nancy Archer finds the strength to stand up to her abusive, cheating husband, doctors that have been medicating her into submission for years and a town that committed her to the sanatorium. She is so threatening to the patriarchal town the sheriff has to electrocute her to death as bullets have no effect. She does die, but takes down Harry, her shitty husband with her.
The VVitch – Thomasin
What to do when the family goat, poisons your brother, mauls your father, drives your mother to try to kill you then reveals itself to be Satan? I know, follow it into the woods and join a coven of naked witches. That’s what Thomasin did, so she must have a pretty dark and dangerous future ahead of her. It’s a background any good goth can get behind.
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Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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