Last Updated on July 27, 2021
Horror does a lot of things great. It gives us tons of bloodshed, crazy f*cked up situations, and often provides ample female flesh to gawk at. But the thing that sends a flick through the roof, more often than not, is the villain. Be it serial killers, ghosts, monsters or some other cool idea, the villain is to horror what the cream is to an Oreo – the good stuff!
That only applies to successful genre pics, though. Because nothing kills a fright flick like a poorly conceived, badly presented, or just plain miscast baddie. And holy shite there are a lot of them. For every Lecter or Alien, the host of knock-offs and wannabes are legion.
So let’s take a look at some of the times when the bad are just plain bad, the nasty are totally nasty, and at the end of it all you find yourself cringing from the affront that just tried to sell itself as a villain.
And as always, Lock-Load-Spit Bullets!
Whoa! Keanu Reeves is a serial killer! That’s like totally – lame. Switch the roles in this pic, let James Spader be the over-talkative maniac with too much time on his hands and perhaps this works OK. I can buy Reeves as a cop that can’t catch his prey. But putting him to work as a bad guy doesn’t fly, especially not with his B&T hair in full effect. Back to the matrix, Neo!
Ugh. I’d actually rather watch the remake of THE HITCHER (which I hated) through a 24-hour repeat marathon than ever have my time stolen from me again by this POS. Stupid, useless sequel to a classic horror film, and it brings with it the indignity of replacing the great Rutger Hauer with the…I don’t even know what to say about Jake Busey. He’s bad enough in general, but when taking part in a flick that requires he be compared to one of the best villains genre has given us, I honestly just feel bad for the guy.
I’m actually a big fan of most of Shyamalan’s work. Loved UNBREAKABLE, even dug SIGNS. But hello stupid idea carried out poorly in this pic. Outside of the fact that part of the problem with the movie is its distinct lack of horror, even though it was heavily marketed that way, we’re still stuck with village elders whose whole raison d’etre makes no damn sense. It’s never good when your reaction to a group’s evil plan is, “What a bunch of f*cking morons”.
Bruce what has come of ye? Even were I inclined to believe a shark could actually desire and seek revenge, I’d like it to be a shark that looks a lot less like it came from a toy store. I’ve seriously seen shark movies on the Sci-Fi Channel that are more realistic than this Mardi Gras float of a killer. I truly thought that JAWS 3-D was as bad as it could get, but I fully admit I was way wrong.
Close one here, because the paramedic in F13 V was right in the mix. Both movies essentially fall to the same fatal error, no damn Jason Voorhees! Even Shakespeare was careful to give the audience exactly what they wanted before getting all clever and creative. So how did I choose between these two possibilities. Simple, we got plenty of mask time in V, which while ultimately unsatisfying given the killer wasn’t Jason, was a far sight better than some body-hopping slug looking to…hell I can’t even get into it without making my head hurt. Bottom line – No legit Jason? Lame!
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