10 Amazing Horror Villains That Made TV Shows Great

Let's face it, these bad guys are the reason you kept watching from behind the sofa.

Hannibal Mads Mikkelsen
FX

Baring its teeth since the dawn of television, horror has always been something of a niche business on the small screen. However in recent years the sheer quality and quantity of horror programming has caught mass attention. This surge in grisly content has paved the way for increasingly complex characters and smart narratives that sit comfortably aside buckets of blood and gore.

What often makes these shows so endearing to viewers is not their unfortunate protagonists, but the vast variety of vile villains that plague them on a weekly basis. Sure, we all like to root for the good guys and hope they'll come out unscathed, but there's no denying that we all secretly squeal when the bad guys come out to play.

After all, great horror relies on the strength of its villains and you'll find none better than those featured on this list. Be they sadistic killers, monsters from the beyond or ghoulish apparitions, each one of these evildoers helped to push their respective shows to greater heights than ever before.

So grab those cushions, dive under your blankets and lets confront those ten horror TV villains that made their shows amazing.

10. Detective Finney (Psychoville)

Hannibal Mads Mikkelsen
BBC

Whilst Psychoville is often described as a black-comedy before anything else, it constantly leaned into horror with bizarre characters like The Silent Singer and Freddy Fruitcake, but Detective Finney remains its most menacing creation.

First appearing in the criminally overlooked second series, Detective Finney dramatically changed the tone of the show and thrust it into much darker territory than ever before.

Sent in as a wet-man to kill every surviving character from the previous series, Finney immediately caught the fans attention with his imposing presence. Every time he appeared on screen, we braced ourselves for another heartbreaking death of a character we loved so dear.

His methods were cold and cruel, resorting to the likes of hanging, wrist cutting and even jamming a pencil into someone's jugular. The worst part of it all is the supreme sense of joy he seemed to take in killing each target.

The sick sense of satisfaction was always painted across his face, as if he was purposefully wanting the audience to suffer in the same way that Psychoville's central players did whenever they ran afoul of him.

Contributor
Contributor

UK based screenwriter, actor and one-half of the always-irreverent Kino Inferno podcast. Purveyor of cult cinema, survival horror games and low-rent slasher films.