10 Horror Movie Villains With Surprisingly Boring Day Jobs

2010's Nightmare On Elm Street remake dispenses with much of the silliness, one-liners and camp '80s hallmarks of the original, casting a quiet and sinister Jackie Earle Haley as the legendary dream stalker Freddy Krueger.

While the film tacks fairly close to Wes Craven's 1984 original, it also exhumes Freddy's life a bit more, allowing the audience to see the man behind the monster – and, for its efforts, received a lukewarm reception at best. Turns out we don't want too much insight into our villains, especially those that are steeped in mystery, shadow and scarred skin.

Nonetheless, we discover that Freddy is in fact a pre-school groundskeeper, who spends his days tidying the playground, tending the bushes and, umm, abducting children. A more humdrum role we could not imagine for such a feared creature of the night, but it does provide easy access to his prey – and the ideal place where he could create a nook to take them to without being discovered.

Let's just hope Hagrid doesn't follow in his footsteps.