Night TerrorsLooking through our fingers and ranking the best, scariest, dumbest, etc. characters in classic, creative, and totally forgettable horror movies.
Over 200 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Smartest Villains From Across The Horror Genre
Voting Rules
Vote up the most intelligent horror villains.
In the hierarchy of intelligence, the victims generally rank lower than the smart horror movie villains they face with very little deviation from that formula. Sure, there might be a final girl who figures out how to best the villain and end the movie, but the antagonist always tends to come back for more in the next installment. The smartest horror movie villains even manipulate their prey into helping them further their cause, as in the case of Samara Morgan in The Ring 2. Others perfectly set up their traps and narratives to span years of deadly games for a growing circle of targets, just like Jigsaw.
When these scoundrels step up their game from lumbering single-mindedly towards a randy teenager to instead playing mind games that leave both their opponents and the audience in awe, it's a triumph that should be celebrated and singled out. It's no coincidence that the most likable movie villains tend to be among the most erudite and cunning as well, especially since they both dazzle and horrify viewers with their sharp wits and weapons.
Not only does Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) stay several steps ahead of special agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and the other FBI agents throughout The Silence of the Lambs, but he uses them to facilitate his own escape from confinement while still shedding light on the identity of Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine).
Of course, one should never forget that Lecter managed to live among normal people for many years without detection, preying on patients, rude associates, and census takers, then serving them to high-society guests at dinner parties.
Smart is too small a word to use for John Kramer/Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) when one considers the amount of ingenuity, labor, and intelligence required to set up multiple tests for people to redeem themselves, train numerous apprentices, and leave a legacy that allows him to live on well after his demise.
Kramer not only built his original traps by hand, he orchestrated circumstances to bring together specific people in his life to afford them the opportunity to make amends in one of his games.
Portrayed by multiple actors over likely hundreds of adaptations, Dr. Victor Frankenstein is an intelligent villain who uses science to bring dead body parts back to life without regard for ethics or consequence.
Frankenstein's ability to overcome the biological certainties of life and doom in order to reverse or engineer them at will makes him a demented genius among horror antagonists for the ages.
Pinhead (played originally by Doug Bradley, then Stephan Smith Collins and Paul T. Taylor) is the Cenobite leader in Clive Barker's Hellraiser film series, possessing the ability to psychologically antagonize his targets while also recognizing a good bargain when it comes his way.
Articulate and cerebral, Pinhead knows exactly how to manipulate his prey into giving in to him and his fellow Cenobites for eternal misery.
Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) somehow overcomes his demise to exact revenge upon the town that ended his spree as the Springwood Slasher, a serial slayer targeting children. His supernatural presence is fueled by fear and the memories the townspeople still carry of the atrocities he committed, allowing him to pull more targets into the Dream World where he offs them.
The smarts needed to twist the laws of life and the afterlife are fairly astronomical, not to mention his ability to use his targets' greatest fears to manipulate them into giving him exactly what he wants. Only a highly intelligent sociopath can look so deeply into the being of a person to extract that sort of information and use it to their advantage.
Viewers may never know if Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) actually carried out the slayings depicted in American Psycho, but we do know if he did, the lawyer kept his transgressions hidden due to his intelligence. Bateman presents a facade of New York investment firm decadence and materialistic obsession to fit in with his peers, using their own vanity and pride against them to make them targets.
He is also mistaken for other colleagues, using that to his advantage in gathering details about the disappearance of Paul Allen (Jared Leto), his supposed first victim, while staying under the radar of police and suspicion.
