Featuring evil, scary old people as villains in horror movies has become something of a trend recently. Perhaps it's because they're naturally going to have conflict with younger characters, and horror movies usually benefit from having young and immature - and maybe kind of stupid - characters as victims. If a horror movie is particularly concerned with death, maybe there's also something to be gained from having villainous characters who are in the final stages of their lives.
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While there are numerous recent examples of evil old people in movies, it's not an exclusively recent trend, as the following movies will demonstrate. The 10 films below are split between new movies and - ironically - old movies, with the one thing in common being that they're all tense, scary movies that feature old people as the villains.
'X' (2022)
X lives up to its title by being confrontational and suitably extreme. It takes place in the late 1970s, and follows a film crew who rents some property from an elderly couple in a rural area to get a location to shoot their adult film. When the couple catches on to what the young film crew's doing, they're far from pleased... and that's when the violent horror really kicks off.
It's a film that pits the young against the old, and while the old couple are the clear antagonists here, it's also possible to feel sorry for them at certain points. It's not to the point where viewers are likely to be on their side, but it's a surprisingly sad look at growing old, and the jealousy older people can feel toward those who are young. It was followed months later by a prequel called Pearl, which looks at the life of X's main villain 60 years before, when she was young.
'Don't Breathe' (2016)
Don't Breathe is a ruthlessly efficient thriller with a simple setup, great pacing, and a high level of suspense throughout. In the movie, three young people break into the house of a blind, old man, thinking this will make it easy to rob him and make off with his apparent large fortune.
Unfortunately for them, while the man is indeed blind and old, he's also surprisingly good at fighting off home invaders. So begins a struggle for survival, as the young, would-be burglars try to make it out of the house with their lives. Since he's such a physically imposing threat, the blind man here stands out among other old, villainous characters, but given he appears to be in his 60s, he still qualifies.
'Nosferatu the Vampyre' (1979)
Most film vampires are naturally pretty old. Vampirism is a condition that usually grants immortality, after all, and so it's common in vampire movies to have undead characters who have been alive for centuries, and can use their experience and other powers to prove immensely threatening to the film's protagonists.
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Werner Herzog'sNosferatu the Vampyre manages to stand out among other vampire films because of how much it emphasizes the age of its version of Count Dracula. He seems cursed with immortality, and seems to have been driven mad by the bitterness of being alone and unloved. Few takes on Dracula are happy movies, but Nosferatu the Vampyre manages to feel like one of the bleakest, loneliest, and eeriest.
'Halloween' (2018)
In the first Halloween movie, notorious serial killer Michael Myers certainly wasn't an old person. In fact, he was only in his early 20s, seeing as in the 2018 version of Halloween, the same Michael Myers from the first film is back and said to be 61 years old, essentially making him an elderly villain.
Old age has not slowed Myers down, though, as if anything, he's even more brutal and terrifying here than he was in the original Halloween. There's also the fact that the mask hides his age, and gives him the same haunting appearance he had some 40 years earlier. Undoubtedly, he goes to show that slasher movies don't need to feature villains who are young and sprightly to strike fear into viewers.
The 'Saw' series (2004-2021)
While there are numerous antagonists throughout the Saw series, the primary one is Jigsaw. After all, he orchestrates the events of the first three movies, setting up all sorts of horrific games that force his victims to perform gruesome acts if they're to have any chance of staying alive.
Even once the character dies, he still looms large over the franchise. He inexplicably manages to set up scenarios that play out after he's gone, and the character himself manages to show up a few more times, thanks to flashbacks. Given the amount of violence he gets people to inflict, he's probably one of the most threatening old people in horror history, and is fantastically creepy, thanks to Tobin Bell's performance.
'Rosemary's Baby' (1968)
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There's an argument to be made that the true villain of the horror classic Rosemary's Baby is the Devil himself. After all, it's shown he's responsible for subjecting Rosemary to her horrific pregnancy that leads to the titular baby being born. Though it's never seen on screen, Rosemary's reaction is all that's needed for the horror to hit hard.
But the elderly people who live in the apartment complex are instrumental in allowing the Devil's plan to work. They're shown to manipulate Rosemary throughout, and are part of some sort of Devil-worshipping cult that ends up successfully completing their mission. It's a dark film, and the initially innocent-seeming old folks who live around Rosemary are a big part of why things end up so bleak.
'Barbarian' (2022)
Barbarian is another recent example of a horror movie where the villains end up being villainous. It doesn't present that way at first, though, given the movie starts in a tense but somewhat understated way, with two people renting out the same Airbnb house, and working out how to handle the awkward situation.
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Without giving away too many details of this unpredictable movie, it turns out the house is housing a dark secret, with a twisted old man being responsible for many of its horrors. Another antagonist also has the appearance of an old person, but ends up not being as intensely villainous as the film's primary villain... but to elaborate any further would do this wild movie a disservice.
'Marathon Man' (1976)
Granted, Marathon Man isn't quite a horror movie, though it's tense and genuinely hard to watch in parts (especially for those with a fear of going to the dentist). Far from being a movie about a man running marathons, it instead focuses on a young man (Dustin Hoffman) who gets wrapped up in a strange conspiracy, thanks to his brother.
The central antagonist that emerges is an ex-Nazi/war criminal, Dr. Christian Szell, who clashes with Hoffman's character throughout the movie in continually unnerving ways. He's genuinely one of the scariest and most menacing elderly characters in film history, so even if the movie he appears in is more of a thriller than a horror movie, he still deserves a mention.
'Hereditary' (2018)
A haunting and disturbing horror movie about grief and despair, Hereditary centers on a family who gradually unravel after a series of traumatic, tragic events befall them. It's a truly difficult movie to watch at times, and earns its reputation for being one of the most terrifying horror movies of the 21st century so far.
Somewhat similar to Rosemary's Baby, a cult of mostly old people end up being behind many of the film's most horrific events. There's something genuinely unsettling about seeing these once seemingly friendly people end up being so menacing, but it works to the film's advantage, making the shocking turns the climax takes all the more effective.
'The Visit' (2015)
The Visit's a horror movie that approaches the idea of elderly villains in a very direct fashion. The movie follows two young kids who go to stay with their grandparents, with things seemingly normal at first. However, as time goes on, strange things start happening, and what was supposed to be a nice visit turns into a nightmare.
As an M. Night Shyamalan movie, it ends up having a twist that explains why the elderly pair are acting so strangely, and it ends up being a remarkably creepy premise. Shyamalan's style might not be for everyone, but The Visit ended up being a comeback of sorts for the filmmaker, and was followed up by an even more successful film in 2017: Split.
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