10 Strongest Horror Movie Villains

The grand irony of the horror genre is that, unlike almost every other type of movie, the villain is usually more of a protagonist than the poor saps they're stalking.

For any horror film that spawns a sequel or two, this typically means that the villain has graduated to a certain level of iconic notoriety, and effectively become a "brand" in and of themselves.

These murderous characters are typically what bring fans back for sequel after sequel, in awe of their mighty power sets and unique manner of dismantling the human body.

But slasher movies are a dime a dozen, and so only a small number of horror villains can truly stake a claim to ranking among the strongest and most powerful the genre has to offer.

This power might be rooted in pure physicality, be entirely supernatural, or in fact be a beguiling mixture of the two, but only the most pervasively terrifying and dominant horror movie villains need apply.

As a result you won't be surprised to learn that strictly human villains - like Scream's ultra-clumsy Ghostface or Saw's scheming Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) - don't really have much of a place on this list...

The Predator is unquestionably one of the most iconic sci-fi horror characters of all time: an extremely well-equipped hunter with a penchant for visiting alien planets - that is, usually Earth - and throwing down with the finest combatants they have to offer.

In addition to their impressive physical strength and lightning-fast agility, the Predator - or Yautja, as they're actually known - are kitted out with a number of extremely useful tools and technologies to make them more ruthlessly efficient hunters.

The Predator can see in the infrared spectrum, allowing them to easily detect warm-blooded creatures in most environments, while their armour typically comes with a powerful shoulder-mounted cannon. The pièce de résistance, though, must surely be their deliciously devious stealth camouflage.

As a result the Predator can make mincemeat out of most humans it faces off against, and has been able to hold its own against even the Xenomorphs.

Hell, even if you're able to wound the thing, it can perform comprehensive self-surgery, and if it's mortally injured, it may just set a self-destruct device capable of levelling the surrounding area.

Though its fear-inducing ruthlessness is sullied slightly by its inability to distinguish humans who lower their body temperature - as with Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the first film - and their honour system arguably makes them too logical to be purely terrifying, the Predators nevertheless live up to their mighty moniker.