10 Smartest Horror Movie Villains

8. Jack Torrance - The Shining

You might think that Jack Torrance's descent into mania and murderous intention is thanks to him having a fundamentally broken mind, but that isn't quite true. Because Jack starts out as a smart, imaginative man who simply makes a fundamental mistake of ignoring the warnings of the Overlook Hotel's haunting. Even that mistake isn't necessarily a lapse of intellect either, it's more like part of his own personal haunting.

Jack is a writer and a former teacher doomed by his past to relive the sins of his abusive father (though that detail is explored only in the novel) and the entire tragedy of the film is that such a man could fall to animalism and brutality (first to his alcoholism and then to his possession by the Hotel). We're effectively watching Stephen King's anxiety dream about the conflict between his own intelligent, creative brain and his self-destructive tendencies.

And while Jack becomes a traditional slasher sort of villain, it's precisely because of what he is beneath that that really sells the weight of that transformation. He was mean and a mind at war, but you cannot doubt his brilliance, which makes him such a danger when he turns.