The 10 Best Villains in Thriller Movies, Ranked

There are only a handful of villains in film that are so diabolical that they leave a lasting imprint on our frontal cortex during and years after seeing them on the big screen. They are the characters that, even if they are foiled in the end by the antagonist, audiences leave the theater thinking, “Now that was an evil ass villain!” Gary Oldman has played several twisted villains and finds his name on this list more than once. The same can be said of Kevin Spacey.

Some are bombastic and over-the-top, while others prefer the less is more mustache-twirling approach. Either way, they must check all the right boxes to be included in this list of the ten best. First, they must make the audience eager to see their next scene. Great villains often steal the show from the good guys. Second, they have to make the viewer so disgusted with them that a part of you doesn’t even like the actor or actress playing the part, only to realize that the hate comes from a spot-on performance that pushed the movie to the next level. Finally, they must be unforgettable! Here are the best villains in thriller movies, ranked.

10 Amy Dunne – ‘Gone Girl’ (2014)

Played by Rosamund Pike

Rosamund Pike delivered what may be her best performance in 2014’s Gone Girl opposite Ben Affleck. Director David Fincher is always on point, but even he couldn’t have expected such a deliciously villainous turn by Pike. As a psychopathic suburban housewife, she is as conniving as they come. All it takes is her husband’s infidelity to make it appear that he is the main suspect in her disappearance. Normal people who aren’t happy being married get divorced.

But Pike’s plan is so intricate that it is mesmerizing to watch her unravel while maintaining a flat affect and typical facade. She will smite anyone who gets in the way of her horrifying plan. While husband Nicholas is left to flop around like a freshly caught fish under the microscope of the nation’s media, she is off killing old lovers and covering herself in their blood. Rosamund Pike seriously upped the ante for female villains, and audiences should thank her for minting a new gold standard.

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9 Alonzo Harris – ‘Training Day’ (2001)

Played by Denzel Washington

“King Kong ain’t got nothin’ on me!” No, Denzel Washington, no, he doesn’t. Antoine Fuqua‘s tale of a dirty narcotics cop taking the wide-eyed rookie Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) out for his first day as a member of Alonzo Harris’ rogue squad is movie-making at its best. The great thing about Fuqua and Washington and their collaboration on Training Day is how the audience is slowly taken along with the two cops for a day, seeing how, with each scene, they up the ante on just how far Alonzo will go to abuse the people he deems unimportant.

Washington as Alonzo Harris is what we have grown to expect from the phenomenally prolific and highly decorated actor. However, this performance stands out because Fuqua trusts his leading man to take the character to another level. With this freedom, Washington absolutely owns every scene he is in and is an unquestioned alpha amid a dirty squad filled with misguided bravado and faux machismo. Harris’s toxic masculinity is so stomach-churning that it earned him his first Best Actor Oscar and a place squarely on the list.

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8 Clarence Boddicker – ‘RoboCop’ (1987)

Played by Kurtwood Smith

Maybe seeing That 70’s Show Dad on this list is a bit of a surprise? Not if you’ve seen Paul Verhoeven‘s 1987 science fiction action thriller mashup RoboCop. Peter Weller is Murphy, a cop who is killed in the line of duty by Boddicker (Smith) and his group of miscreants and minions, only to be brought back as the future of law enforcement. As part robot and part human, it is an early glimpse into a dystopian society that relies on sentient artificial intelligence to be better and more dependable than the flawed cops that patrol the streets today.

Something makes Kurtwood Smith as Boddicker pop off the screen, but we can’t quite pinpoint it. It is a combination of his moxy, his relative intelligence compared to his lackeys, and a charisma that you don’t see in many of the villains of the time. Maybe it’s the most gruesome way that he and his men turn Murphy into Swiss cheese without even blinking. He is a dystopian Hans Gruber and deserves a place on the list for a compelling presence that is impossible to get out of your head.

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7 Anton Chigur – ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)

Played by Javier Bardem

“Call it, friend-o.” Javier Bardem‘s low baritone voice as Anton Chigur in the Coen Brothers 2007 film No Country for Old Men is perfectly haunting. When Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) foolishly thinks he can quickly grab a tote bag full of cash, Chigur is deployed to track him down across the vast and dusty West Texas plains. It is a beautiful game of cat and mouse, with Chigur being the closest to a human Terminator we have seen.

Bardem, as Chigur, has all the elements of a classical villain but with a very Coen-esque twist. He speaks infrequently, making you lean on every word he utters. The creepy low dulcet is also a great aspect. But what puts Chigur over the top is the excellent bowl haircut and his unique modus operandi. An air gun used to kill cattle before taking them to slaughter is also a Coen thing and very Texan. Turning that into a weapon used against his victims is top-notch.

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6 Det. Norman Stansfield – ‘Leon: The Professional’ (1994)

Played by Gary Oldman

Some call it Leon: The Professional, while others call it simply The Professional. Whatever the case, the movie delivered one of the best villains of the decade in the pill-popping dirty cop Detective Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman). In the first of two smashingly spot-on bad dudes, Stansfield decides that he has had enough of the French assassin, Leon, and his young charge, Matilda (Natalie Portman). They can both finger him for the brutal killing of Matilda’s foster family.

Stansfield is the worst kind of filthy cop. He uses his badge to exert authority and power over the people he is supposed to protect. He even kills an innocent little boy to protect his misdeeds. His demand, calling in “EVERYONE!!!” for backup when realizing Leon is the worst man he has ever dealt with, is one of the classic villain lines. Stansfield isn’t one of those bad guys we want to see succeed, and that’s because Gary Oldman has proven time and again that he can make audiences really despise him and take it home with them after the movie.

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5 Hans Gruber – ‘Die Hard’ (1988)

Played by Alan Rickman

Easily the best villain of the 80s, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) redefined what made him a diabolical foe in John McTiernan‘s 1988 seminal action thriller Die Hard. When he and his team of ruthless mercenaries raid the Nakatomi Tower with their sights set on millions in bearer bonds, it appears the only one who can save the day is NYPD cop John McClane (Bruce Willis). But as rogue and hardened as the men who take McClane’s wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and her co-workers hostage, there is no doubt who controls this group of hired thugs, and it is the meticulous Gruber.

Rickman plays Gruber with such confidence that it changes how we view villains on screen. When executing his plan, he is so calm and collected that you almost want him to get away with the bonds. The argument over Die Hard shouldn’t be whether it is a Christmas movie. The real debate is whether Gruber is better than the greatest Bond villains, like Goldfinger, Blofeld, and Dr. No. Gruber was more than a great villain; he was a bridge between the Bond villain and the suave foils we see on the big silver screen today.

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4 John Doe – ‘Seven’ (1995)

Played by Kevin Spacey

Dante never knew that his seminal work, Dante’s Inferno, would inspire a crazed madman to unleash a series of ghoulish murders in David Fincher‘s beautifully macabre film Seven. The naked, dark, and rainy city that detectives William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and David Mills (Brad Pitt) navigate in pursuit of a calculated and brilliant madman is a gritty crime noir at an elite level. John Doe is on a mission to be the angel of death and write the wrongs of society. He leads our protagonists through a ghastly maze of blood and guts, ending with the unforgettable “What’s in the box?” line.

It was actually difficult ranking John Doe this low, but we couldn’t have two Spacey characters back-to-back. The script, written by Andrew Kevin Walker, is a masterful combination of established classical literature and a modern noir interpretation. Mills and Somerset have an uneasy chemistry caused by the unrelenting drive of one of the craziest villains ever captured on film. There is a sense of impending doom that is punctuated by Spacey’s minimalist performance. Make no mistake, John Doe has the upper hand, and Mills is too short-sighted to see it. This is another jewel of a villain that overshadows two formidable protagonists with his subdued insanity.

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3 Annie Wilkes – ‘Misery’ (1990)

Played by Kathy Bates

Based on the Stephen King novel, Misery is essentially a two-act play, with tour-de-force performances from Kathy Bates and James Caan. Caan plays Paul Sheldon, a prolific and popular author who probably wishes he had died in a snowy cliffside car accident. Instead, his “greatest fan,” Annie Wilkes, pulls him from the wreckage and returns him to her remote cottage. It is the beginning of a convalescent nightmare that Annie would only allow to progress to a certain point before taking a sledgehammer to his legs.

Bates is spectacular as the delusional and murderous Wilkes. Her soft demeanor only lasts as long as she completely controls Paul’s rehabilitation. When he gets close to getting out of bed and walking, she “hobbles” the helpless man, setting his recovery back to the beginning. Annie is demanding rewrites that satisfy her fantasy of Sheldon’s characters. And when her “dirty birdie” idol hatches a plan to escape her demented wrath, things get truly out of hand. Appropriately, Paul’s typewriter becomes his best weapon as he struggles to save himself from a crazed fan.

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2 Drexl Spivey – ‘True Romance’ (1993)

Played by Gary Oldman

Appearing for a second time, the outstanding British performer Gary Oldman deserves this spot on the list. True Romance is a gritty noir thriller written by the illustrious Quentin Tarantino. It boasts an incredible ensemble cast, including Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Brad Pitt, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, and Tom Sizemore. In a movie that continues to up the ante with every scene, it is Oldman’s portrayal of pimp and drug dealer Drexl Spivey that stands out amongst a host of solid and unsavory performances.

One of the best indicators of a great villain is how sleazy you feel in your gut while they’re on the screen. And Drexl Spivey is one of the filthiest. With his cloudy eye, scarred face, dreadlocks, and an open leopard skin robe, he plays tether ball with that swinging shag-tasseled lamp and makes the viewer squirm in the worst way. He treats Alabama (Arquette) like property, and when Clarence (Slater) gets the better of him in a no-holds-barred brawl in Spivey’s place of business, you feel satisfaction but also a little sad that you won’t get to see any more of Oldman’s singular turn as Spivey. “It ain’t white boy day, is it?”

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1 Keyser Soze/Roger “Verbal” Kint – ‘The Usual Suspects’ (1995)

Played by Kevin Spacey

There is little debate that the top spot on the list goes to a villain so well-disguised that we don’t even know we’ve been looking at him throughout The Usual Suspects. Kevin Spacey makes a list a second time, and his portrayal of Roger “Verbal” Kint/Keyser Soze is easily the most inventive and twisted bad guy in the last 50 years of thrillers. The cast is stellar, including Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, and Giancarlo Esposito. It is so freaking good that you’re not even sure what you just saw. A relatively unknown Spacey gets buried on the marquee with little billing.

Try to pick from the most quotable movie villain ever, “I used to be in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois…Back when I was picking beans in Guatemala…How do you shoot the Devil in the back?… The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist…And like that, he’s gone!” Keyser Soze is movie magic at its best, brilliantly written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. The twist ending is unforgettable, but it’s a marvelous performance by Spacey as a disabled man who watches everything unfold along with the audience, only to pull the rug out from under us. Was Redfoot even real? The fact that Verbal narrates the film is another double bird by McQuarrie that never felt so good. He was a monster hidden in plain sight and as cold-blooded as they come.

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NEXT:The 30 Best Movie Villains of All Time, Ranked