Horror films are not rightly recognized for their craft and artisanship by awards bodies like The Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and the various guilds that nominate their respective craft. But when you take a closer look, the genre is full of great performances. Often, that kind of role gets overlooked and is swept under the rug for being a part of the horror. The material of horror films often asks the actors to go to depths unknown, stretching their will and ability to match the atmosphere of the director.
It’s often also over the top, gutsy, and balls to the wall scenery chewing. Acts like Jack Nicholson and Anthony Hopkins sunk their teeth into iconic horror movie characters they bought to life on the screen. So many horror films operate under small budgets and cast no-name or unknown actors to fill the conventions ask of by the genre. But, when the marriage of a great actor meets the material, the results are often unforgettable. Here are the all-time best performances in horror films, ranked.
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10 Willem Dafoe — The Lighthouse
A24
“Hark!!”, in Robert Eggers’s psycho-horror hangout The Lighthouse, Willem Dafoe had the space to shine and spit out quotable line after quotable line. Going head to head with Robert Pattinson as the two delve deeper and deeper into a drunken psychosis, Dafoe bleeds the frames with a magnificent sailor riff. Looking elegant with a big beard and pipe, but brutal in his behavior as he manipulates Pattinson. Dafoe licks his chops and screams profusely through every scene creating one of his most memorable characters.
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9 Ellen Burstyn — The Exorcist
Warner Brothers
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist shocked audiences upon release in 1973 and is still finding new audience members to terrify today. A haunting, suffocating, and relentless piece of horror that examines the borders of faith, conviction, and evil. A film that slowly mounts the horrors of possession and how an institution like religion is not without its cruelties and flaws. At the center of the film is the mother played by Ellen Burstyn. Her tragic concern and love for her daughter break the barriers between good and evil. Burstyn is ridden with trauma and finds her humanity as the devil gets a hold of her house.
8 Kathy Bates — Misery
Columbia Pictures
In the vein of Stephen King’s pop-horror sensibilities, King took his worst fears and manifested them in Misery. Kathy Bates plays the super-fanatic to its most extreme ends, holed up in a cabin in the snowy pines of Colorado. Torturing her favorite writer, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), the film becomes a physical and psychological battle that turns into Caan fighting for his life. But it is Bates’ tour-de-force performance that will be the film’s lasting legacy.
7 Naomi Watts — Mulholland Drive
Universal Pictures
Taking the genre conventions of noir and flipping them inside out to create a surreal, body-switching mystery into the abyss of Hollywood and the industry makes for what most consider David Lynch’s masterpiece. With an incredible Naomi Watts at the center, as she delves deep into the Lynchian world of dread and the Hollywood Hills begin to swallow her alive, Mulholland Drive is a genius work of disorder as Watts finds a perfect wavelength and becomes attuned to the Lynch rhythm. Especially when it comes to breaking any expectations of a scene, Watts flexes her ability to become a scene stealer when auditioning for a small role. Watts and Lynch made magic together.
6 Jack Nicholson — The Shining
Warner Bros.
In the vein of Stanley Kubrick’s dark sense of humor that permeates all his work and the inertia of dread that cracks through his films, Jack Nicholson, the screen idol, goes lunatic in The Shining, adding a new dynamic to the Kubrick oeuvre. While inflicting trauma on his family as he slowly loses his mind, Nicholson’s performance is one of over-the-top theatrics, going full tilt as he dives down the rabbit hole, but also colors the character with the classic Jack-speak. “Here’s Johnny!”, Kubrick cast the role perfectly, creating another role that became iconic.
5 Anthony Hopkins — Silence of the Lambs
Orion Pictures
Even though he was only in the film for 24 minutes, in a nearly two-hour runtime, Anthony Hopkins created a persona so evil and eerie, his presence haunted the film throughout. From his sinister smile to the way he never blinks while talking to the curious Jodie Foster, Hopkins got inside the serial-killer mind of Hannibal Lecter, leaving almost no trace of humanity. Instead, dive into the cold, brutal intelligence that he would later embody to its grossest ends in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. Silence of the Lambs was the last film at the Oscars to win the Big Five awards for Best Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay, and Picture.
4 George C. Scott — The Changeling
Pan-Canadian Film Distributors
A dread-filled haunted house film that director Peter Medak controls with a sense of eerie atmosphere as his camera lingers around the empty spaces of loss. George C. Scott stars in The Changeling as a lonely composer who moves into an empty mansion that has a history ready to be unearthed. Scott delves deep into the mystery that lay in the house as he uncovers a traumatic past; he strokes the film brilliantly with his acting sensibilities. Convincing in his ability to convey grief while also holding the screen as the iconic screen presence he is, Scott goes full detective mode.
3 Toni Collette — Hereditary
A24
A debut that announced Ari Aster to the world of horror, but also shined a light on the wholly underrated talents of its lead actress, Toni Collette. In a fit of domestic terrors, where the family dynamics and the otherworldly horrors of a history that runs through the bloodline start to crash to the surface, Collette steals the show. Collette plays the matriarchy with a heightened sense of dread, but also imbues the film with humility as she struggles to wrestle her family together. Collette’s performance is terrifying because of its realism. Hereditary is an example of the Australian-born actress being a sheer tour-de-force.
2 Jeremy Irons — Dead Ringers
20th Century Fox
Featuring one of the best dual performances in the history of film, Jeremy Irons turns this queasy body horror film about twin brothers into a heart-wrenching depiction of drug addiction and the violence of sibling rivalries. David Cronenberg doubles down on the slow, methodical approach to unearthing the terror of man’s primal urges but in turn, delivers one of his best. Dead Ringers is as open-hearted and chilling a film as the Canadian director can make.
1 Anthony Perkins — Psycho
Paramount Pictures
Alfred Hitchcock was at his most innovative with Psycho, and he gave us the ultimate evil momma’s boy in “Norman Bates." Played with a subtle naivety that transformed into psychopathy by Anthony Perkins, he has the silver screen as an all-time villain—hiding in the Bates Motel and dressing up like his dead mother when unexpected guests come to the house. Perkins played the character and hid the killer inside him with shy banter and a sly smile. He hid his true motives until the final shot.
