Born bad or turned to the dark?
Learn about the twisted backstories behind the horror canon’s most iconic evildoers.
Still, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat.
Chucky in ‘Child’s Play’; Robert Englund in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’; Daveigh Chase in ‘The Ring’.Credit:United Artists/courtesy Everett Collection; New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection; DreamWorks/courtesy Everett Collection
Sometimes it’s a strategy; sometimes it’s because a franchise needs somewhere to take the story.
To honor those baddie beginnings, here are some of the absolute best horror movie villain origin stories.
InAnnabelle: Creation, toymaker Samuel Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia) mourns the loss of his daughter, Annabelle.
Annabelle and Katie Sarife in ‘Annabelle Comes Home’ (2019).Justin Lubin/Warner Bros.
Thus, the possessed Annabelle was born.
He performs a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul into the now-familiar Good Guy doll.
The voodoo has mercifully fallen by the wayside, for the most part.
Chucky in ‘Child’s Play’ (1988).Everett Collection
Still, the origin remains intact even after eight movies and a TV show.
Krueger was born after his institutionalized mother endured repeated sexual abuse, leaving her unsure of his father.
No amount of trauma or nightmarish villainy was too much to heap onto Krueger’s backstory.
Robert Englund in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984).Everett Collection
All that horror ended with Krueger reborn as the nightmare-inhabiting, knife-fingered monster of nine films.
Godzilla was created by nuclear testing in the ocean and rose to terrorize Japan.
And it has returned to the horror-infused social commentary of the original (2016’sShin Godzilla).
Godzilla in ‘Godzilla’ (1956).Everett Collection
Jigsaw, is the heartbeat of theSawfranchise, even beyond hisSaw IVdeath.
Nonetheless, it provides a basis for who Kramer becomes and his obsession with making people appreciate their lives.
We glimpse Pinhead’s origin in the series' second movie,Hellbound: Hellraiser II.
Tobin Bell in ‘Saw VI’ (2009).Everett Collection
That moment reveals that all the Cenobites were once humans.
After all, what happened to Pinhead is basically happening to Kirsty.
Plus, the secondHellraiseris a great movie that is nearly as creepy as the original.
Doug Bradley in ‘Hellraiser’ (1987).Everett Collection
Daveigh Chase in ‘The Ring’.DreamWorks
