9 Unfairly Underrated Movie Villains From The 21st Century

As we’ve already established, successful villains can come in many shapes and sizes. Some are able to capture your imagination with devilish magnetism, whilst others make a lasting impression through their intimidation factor, or by being strangely sympathetic.

Then you have those who fall into a different camp altogether. You know, the utterly contemptible ones who make your blood boil every time you have to look at their stupid faces! For reference, look no further than Joffrey Baratheon, Amon Göth, or Nurse Ratched.

Yet as bad as those guys were, Mrs. Carmody is somehow even worse. Fuelled by a holier-than-thou arrogance and played to pious perfection by Marcia Gay Harden, she is the archetypal depiction for a self-righteous Christian zealot, one who stubbornly insists that everyone agrees with her world-view, or suffers for failing to.

Convinced that the film’s inter-dimensional beasties are a form of divine retribution, she volunteers as a spokesperson for the Almighty and cleverly spins the film's events so that they suit her alarmist fear mongering. Not only is she relentlessly cruel and deceptively resourceful, but she’s also infuriatingly convinced of her own virtue. Which just makes her all the more threatening.

Her judgemental campaign is harrowing to witness, as one-by-one, she lures scared and vulnerable people over to ''God's'' side, blindsiding them with demented preachings, dire warnings, and vague promises of salvation. Once she has secured a large enough flock, it’s not too long before she takes things a little further, instigating paranoid witch hunts and even demanding blood sacrifices.

Suffice it to say, she emerges as the most horrifying aspect of The Mist, which is saying something for a film that contains oversized, acid spiders.