As Halloween approaches, The Heights arts editors continue our tradition of bringing you our picks for the best—and scariest—seasonal film favorites.
After reading our roundup of the best slasher film villains, both iconic and unfamiliar, readers will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite via a poll on The Heights’ Instagram. The winner will be featured in a final Halloween film column, just in time for a quick pre-Halloweekend movie night with your favorite chilling villain.
Freddy Krueger, from A Nightmare on Elm Street
One of the most popular Halloween costumes for kids who just want to scare their neighbors, Freddy Krueger is chilling both onscreen and off.
Although Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) first captured audiences with its terrorized teen protagonists Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and Glen Lantz, played by a young Johnny Depp in his film debut, the movie’s lasting legacy ended up being its central villain, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund).
Krueger, in most of the countless installments and spin-offs of the film, is a timeless slasher villain. His origin story—just your typical raised-from-the-dead-after-being-burned-alive arc—means he can be brought back, year after year, to terrorize yet another Ohio suburb in yet another sequel.
Perhaps the oddest part about Krueger’s status as one of the most recognizable slasher villains is his trademark red-and-green sweater and brown fedora. These are coupled with his infamous bladed glove, which has bled over into other iconic horror franchises, appearing in Bride of Chucky and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
While Krueger’s victims are as resilient as those in any horror franchise, and continue surviving so that they can appear in further films, those he does kill are especially chilling.
Krueger is every kid’s worst nightmare villain, because as the film’s tagline insinuates, if you don’t wake up screaming after seeing him, you won’t wake up at all.
Pearl, from Pearl
What happens if the most terrifying slasher villain is just … the girl next door?
Ti West’s Pearl, the second in a trilogy of A24 camp horror flicks following Pearl’s life, features Mia Goth as the chilling, yet somehow endearing, Pearl. Although the film opens with Pearl as a naive, wistful farm girl who yearns for a life onstage, we quickly get a glimpse of her less charming creative outlets when she begins wielding her farm tools as weapons.
Interestingly, the most chilling part of Goth’s performance as Pearl is not her violent breakdowns or piercing screams. What makes Pearl one of the most unsettling modern slasher characters is her apparent innocence and genuine passion for her craft—show business, that is, not murder—for most of the film.
Watching Pearl feels like watching two separate movies, one about a passionate young girl trying to make it as a dancer, and one about a serial killer. As the film progresses, Pearl’s two personas merge, leading her to channel her homicidal rage into her personal life and career.
“Please! I’m a star! I’m a star!” Pearl screams in one scene at a panel of judges who reject her for a role, the dialogue of which has since become popular online.
No matter the scene, Pearl feels her emotions deeply, and this might be the most relatable, and scariest, thing about her.
Ghostface, from the Scream series
The phone rings, a deep voice is on the other end of the line, and all of a sudden, someone’s been stabbed in the most gruesome and bloody way possible. Audience, meet Ghostface.
Ghostface is an iconic Halloween villain for a murderer who is never the same person—the mantle of “Ghostface” is passed on from person to person throughout the Scream series. The gore and violence that follows Ghostface, though, is still as bloody as ever, regardless of whoever is under the iconic mask.
Ghostface has undoubtedly left his mark on the slasher genre, and on Halloween as a whole.
Countless trick-or-treaters rep his mask yearly, and a new Scream film is produced every couple of years in response to the audience’s high demand.
What really makes Ghostface memorable are the people he attacks—the protagonists of the Scream films always present as likable, relatable, and tough as nails.
The most recent iteration of Scream, in 2023, followed sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega) as they took on three Ghostfaces at once. The Ghostfaces are formidable, but the sisters’ bond is what really brings out Ghostface’s brutality and cruelty when they face each other.
Ghostface has become slasher royalty thanks to the emotional bond the audience forms with the people he terrorizes—seeing yourself in someone who gets gutted by Ghostface makes him scarier, and realer. It’s hard to decide which is worse.
Michael Myers, from the Halloween series
From his menacing walk, to his uncanny immortality, to his apathy toward the people he murders, Michael Myers is one slasher villain who you should definitely be afraid of.
The enduring battle between Myers and Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is practically a Halloween legend at this point, both in terms of the holiday and the Halloween franchise.
Myers first killed his older sister on Halloween night at the age of six, and once he grew up, he became a mass serial killer hell-bent on causing as much death and destruction as is needed to finally kill Strode, the only protagonist to ever truly escape Myers from the original film.
The soundtrack to the Halloween films is almost as iconic as Myers himself. Dressed up in his blue jumpsuit and white mask, Myers is another popular choice for Halloween costumes.
What might be scariest about Myers is his complete lack of vocals. Never once does he utter a single word. Myers kills his victims without sound, without facial expressions, and without any signs of emotion at all.
While Myers has no obvious motivation to kill other than his sociopathic nature, his determination and strength are no joke.
Myers has been stabbed, shot and even burned alive, yet he always comes out the other side as strong as ever. Like Laurie says, “an evil like his never stops … it just grows older.”
