10 Best Horror Movie Villains With Absolutely No Motive

There are plenty of slasher icons out there, none of which have a particularly good moral compass. They take a sadistic pleasure in slaughtering their victims, with genre heavyweights racking up impressive body counts throughout their respective franchises.

But one slasher villain stands above the rest as the most malicious: Michael Myers from John Carpenter’s genre-defining classic, Halloween.

Known only as “The Shape” in this seminal flick, Myers is a knife-wielding maniac who terrorises babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) on Halloween night after escaping a mental institution.

Audiences are purposely told little about who Myers is. All we know is that he killed his sister on Halloween when he was six years old. He can appear and disappear with ease, is seemingly unkillable, and his psychologist (Donald Pleasence) constantly refers to the killer as being pure evil. The character is borderline supernatural, and it’s precisely this ambiguity that has made this killer so iconic.

Unfortunately, though, schlocky sequels and Rob Zombie’s remake would try to fill in the blanks by giving Myers a backstory and motivation. Not only did this turn the character into a parody of its former self, it proves exactly why not having a motivation makes for a better horror villain.