10 Most Vile Villains From Recent Horror Movies

5. Paddy - Speak No Evil

This will put you off making holiday friends for life.

The consistently brilliant James McAvoy plays Paddy, a poster boy for toxic masculinity, in a remake of the 2022 Danish film of the same name. He is, quite simply, a disgustingly overbearing piece of s**t.

Paddy makes life unbearably uncomfortable for couple Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) and their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) at his Devon farm; God forbid you dance out of time to Cotton Eye Joe in front of Paddy. He forces pescatarian Louise to eat a piece of chicken, but when he later apologises, he only does so directly to Ben. He makes caustic comments to his 'son', Ant (Dan Hough), like whether the cat's got his tongue. He constantly tries to play Louise and Ben off against each other, including bringing up the former's sexting indiscretions with the latter having eavesdropped on their private conversation beforehand. He always has an answer for everything whenever they challenge him, twisting it to make them feel bad and awkward.

Paddy physically controls those around him by aggressively manhandling Ben and Ant, and calculatingly caressing his partner Ciara's (Aisling Franciosi) arm during an evening out, who was groomed by Paddy from an early age. The tension is so palpably taught, it makes your palms  sweat.

After Ant uncovers the chilling truth - that Paddy and Ciara routinely lure families to their farmhouse, murder the parents, then cut out the replacement child's tongue to keep them mute - Paddy goes full on Beast mode, revelling in the hunt with frightening ferocity. No wonder Animal by Def Leppard is one of his favourite songs.

It's triumphantly fitting that it's Ant who caves Paddy's head in for the ultimate screaming therapy.