Samiul Bashar Samin
Villains! Admit it. A movie without a good antagonist would be blasé. I mean a movie might have a really good plot and all, but without a villain that inspires hate (and sometimes admiration) from the audience. Here are some of the most notable characters we love to hate:
Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects
The legend of Keyser is one that sends chills down everyone’s spines. According to rumor, when he was in Turkey as a petty drug smuggler, rival Hungarian smugglers broke into his house and ended up raping and murdering his wife and when he arrived, they killed one of his children and held the others at gunpoint and demanded his retirement from the business. Instead of surrendering, Keyser killed his children and all but one of the smugglers and then went on to kill everyone in the mafia, their friends and families. He then went underground never to resurface again until he posed as the Verbal Kent (Kevin Spacey), a con artist with cerebral palsy. The character’s deep-set psychotic tendencies that resurface when he’s not playing the “harmless” Kent is what really gets everyone by surprise.
Norman Bates from Psycho
Identity disorder and a deep-set psychological problem are what make this villain one for the ages. Alfred Hitchock’s movie has redefined the way that we perceive the depth to which a person can fall due to mental illness. Bates was abused by his mother and was under the impression that women are perpetrators of sin due to her brainwashing. So when she took a lover, he did the only logical thing. He killed them with styrene. He developed dissociative identity disorder after that where he thought he was his mother, Norma Bates. He then had her body in the motel he inherited from her and he just went on a killing spree after that.
Darth Vader from Star Wars
Despite having Jar Jar Binks in the franchise, Star Wars is still revered by fans all over the world. And a lot of it is attributed to the antagonist Darth Vader. The moment he destroyed Tatoonie sent a collective chill down our spines. The young and talented Jedi tipped to be the best of them all shifted to the dark side and ended up exterminating all the Jedi. Who could forget the part where he killed all those young Jedi trainees just to make sure that there were no more Jedi’s? Darth became a blood thirsty Nazi Sith Lord and there was no turning back from there.
Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs
This guy really needs no introduction. If you’re a psychological horror fan, there can never be any doubt that Lecter is one of the greatest movie villains ever. The way he just manipulates everyone in the movie makes him extremely unpredictable at times and honestly, it’s just a pleasure to see his plans come to fruition even if that means the murder of innocent people. Oh, and by the way he’s a cannibal too. So yep, Prepare to have a few “almost about to puke” moments during the span of the movie.