10 Terrifying Horror Movie Villains Ruined By Terrible Backstories

Wes Craven's 1977 cult classic The Hills Have Eyes is a prime example of the early slashers that rose to prominence over the course of the decade. Craven built the film around the legend of Sawney Bean, a well-respected member of society that was eventually driven out to the wilderness and supposedly cannibalised over 1,000 people during his twenty-five years away from society, which can be seen in the film's antagonists Pluto and his deranged family of cannibals.

The thing is, audiences know exactly what they're getting themselves into when they sit down with a film like The Hills Have Eyes. A crazed group of cannibals torturing and killing a group of people is hardly a complicated premise that requires a ton of character development, which is why the decision to give these particular characters their own backstories is a little baffling.

The original film is fairly good at letting these cannibals be mindless cannibals, however it's in the franchise's later releases that things really begin to venture into the unnecessary. The history of this family being Nevada miners that refused to be turfed out of their land and slowly morphed into the monsters audiences see in the films is either something most people already knew and didn't need to see, or simply a terrible distraction from what everyone else wants to watch.

Similar slasher franchises such as the Wrong Turn series are great examples of how a bunch of deranged cannibals can stay just as a bunch of deranged cannibals. These franchises show their vile acts and atrocities and rely on them to establish their traits and personalities, rather than shoehorning in a forced backstory to try and do the same job.