20 Greatest Horror Villains Of The 2020s (So Far)

Much of the brilliance of Strange Darling's villain lies in the fact that it just isn't what audiences expect at all. 

The marketing for the film sold JT Mollner's twisted horror-thriller as a cat-and-mouse game between a young woman (Willa Fitzgerald) and the psychopath (Kyle Gallner) chasing her down.

But per the movie's non-linear structure, we don't learn the truth until the halfway point, that the woman is actually a serial killer called the Electric Lady and the "psychopath" is really one of her justifiably pissed off intended victims, who just so happens to also be a cop

Fitzgerald gives a phenomenal performance in the role, lending enormous dimension to a character who could easily come off one-note in the hands of a lesser cast and crew.

Instead, she's a fascinating and expectation-defying example of a horror villain driven to kill through compulsion, to eliminate anyone who she perceives as a devil rather than a human being.