50 Infuriating Horror Movie Characters We All Secretly Wanted To Die
36. The Black Phone - Terrence
Now for a character who wasn't merely insufferable, he was outright harrowing to watch. That is The Black Phone's Terence, the abusive, alcoholic father of the movie's leads, Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw).
The main antagonist of this one is the Grabber, Ethan Hawke's serial killer of children, and he was a fantastic villain, yet Terence almost matches him in terms of the effect he had on the audience. Even now, it's difficult to forget the scene in which Terence viciously beats Gwen with a belt, a sequence so upsetting that director Scott Derrickson had to fight to keep it in the movie.
Terence was a thoroughly unsettling character, especially thanks to Davies' terrific performance, and it was something of a surprise to see him make it to the end of the movie in one piece. Viewers would not have mourned him had he died, put it that way.
What sets this guy apart is that, unlike virtually every other character on this list, he was redeemed in a subsequent appearance. At the end of the first movie, he apologizes to his kids and promises to do better. Crazily enough, in the aforementioned Black Phone 2, Terence had actually followed through and was now three years sober. As much as what he did before was unforgivable, the fact that he successfully managed to change rendered him a more sympathetic character than before.