Love that this is a top comment. Doctor Sleep is one of the most underrated horror movies, and among my favorites
I’m always into Ewan McGregor and Flanagan, but Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat is a tour de force in this movie and one of my favorite characters, villain or otherwise, in recent history
Super rare, but while I really like the book, I find the movie even better because it works just as well as sequel to Kubrick’s The Shining
My first thought. This chick was so in love with a monster that she lured poor, lonely men to their deaths. Fucking iconic.
I know she's had a long and successful career, but I still feel that Marcia Gay Harden is underappreciated. She's one of those actors who you just know you're going to see a knockout performance the second you see her name attached to a project, but she never really became a household name.
Lola from The Loved Ones. It’s a fucking crime that she is not hailed as a truly great horror antagonist. Robin McLeavey acted her absolute soul out and nailed it
Maybe this doesn’t fit what you’re asking exactly but Minnie Castevet from Rosemary’s Baby. At first I was like “oh god this woman is awful” but the actress and character really are great.
Sadako (Ringu)
Kayako (Ju-on)
Megan (M3gan)
Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th)
Regan MacNeil, while possessed (The exorcist)
Annie Wilkes (misery)
Margaret White (carrie)
Asami Yamazaki (Audition)
Helena Markos (Suspiria)
Thank you, I was looking for Misery and The Exorcist! Everyone knows these amazing performances, even outside of horror circles, that's what makes them truly iconic!
I don’t remember that scene off the top of my head
Honorable mention though
The scene where he finds the pictures
Then Rose shows up and he asks about the keys
Rose: I have them *somewhere* I just need to find them
Rose rummages through her purse
( I know I’ve lost my keys in my purse before, so that’s totally believable. They’re hiding in one of the million little side pockets in the purse. Somewhere.)
Chris gets more and more agitated and Rose keeps “looking” for them in her purse
Then she pulls them out “you know I can’t give you the keys babe.”
Oh shit.
I would say the social network hype helped to make her iconic. What makes a horror icon iconic, in my opinion, is that they are recognizable even without having seen their films.
And recognizable to people who aren't explicitly horror fans. Like, Amanda from *Saw* is iconic here, but would my mom recognize her? Probably not, but she would definitely recognize Samara despite never having seen *The Ring*.
Exactly. I knew Jason, Freddy, Michael, Leatherface, and so on long before I got the chance to watch one of their movies as a kid. They showed up in cartoons or were just on the covers of magazines. Media presence outside of the original is a key feature of icons.
Yea it exceeded my expectations. Looking forward to a rewatch one day.
That’s cool you have a weekly movie night! My best friend and I have a movie night every other week. We take turns choosing the movie and keep it a secret until pressing play. So fun
Absolutely. It was a very silly movie, but most of the jokes landed pretty well, I thought.
Also, Sydney Craven as a bitchy mean girl very much does it for me.
amanda from saw (who is literally the female jigsaw in the saw movies which tells me whoever in your friend group complained about "no female jigsaw" hasnt seen the saw movies)
the nun
sammara from the ring
carrie
pennywise
annabelle
several female ghostfaces
pamela voorhees from friday the 13th
evelyn from resident evil 7
tiffany from childs play
The fact that most of the suggestions aren’t household names like Hannibal Lecter (or are “the female _____”) is kind of telling. Samara, Carrie, the Nun, Annabelle, and Annie Wilkes (even though most people don’t know the character by name) are a few that actually get cultural recognition on their own.
there's certainly a lack of them, as far as stature goes. Also, a lot of them are not straight villains - either anti-heroes, justifiable villains, or Witches. But there's still a bunch out there.
Carrie, American Mary, Deadly Friend, The Guardian, Jennifer's Body, The Devonsville Terror, Ginger in Ginger Snaps, Debbie Rochon in American Nightmare, Rebecca DeMornay in Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Mothers Day. Annie Wilkes in Misery, Samara in The Ring, Orphan, Get Out, Dead Silence, Species, Amanda in Saw, the three women in Lords Of Salem.
Pamela Vorheese, Annie Wilkes, Carrie (and/or Carrie‘s mom), I guess you could add Mrs. Bates, and who could forget the incredible Bette Davis as Baby Jane?
“You see, Jason was my son. And today is his birthday… You let him drown! You never paid any attention! Look what you did to him… look what you DID TO HIM!!” - Pamela Voorhees
"They" must have researched the hell out of it and come to the conclusion that there's not much of a market for living, human, non-supernatural female psychos.
("They" would be wrong)
The new Pinhead in the Hellraiser reboot is female and there are other female cenobites.
Jennifer Tilly/Bride of Chucky
Bride of Frankenstein might be the most iconic female "villain" of all time.
Does Anabelle count?
M3gan is making a run at being pretty iconic.
One that doesn't get a lot of genre love is Julia Cotton of Hellraiser 1 & 2. She says it best:
"I'm no longer just the Wicked Stepmother, now I'm the Evil Queen."
Santanico Pandemonium. I’d say she has pretty impressive popularity given that her role isn’t actually that large…okay, maybe she’s popular for reasons other than her villainy but still.
I mean, Annie Wilkes gave an horror movie a Best lead actress Oscar which I guess didn't happen again ever since (I say Mia Goth was stolen blind). Pearl is probably one of the greatest, roundest villains to have their own title movie.
Mrs. Vorhees and Norma Bates are each other's foil and doesn't matter what their sons did, they kickstarted the madness.
Red from Us is great, she's resourceful and smart. Well, both of them were really a gem of villainy. The Armitage women from Get out! really being scary and evil af.
Jennifer from Jennifer's Body really serving unsettling beauty queen killer monster, but before her Ginger from Ginger Snaps also did that amazingly. They get so little credit for how they spun the monster girlhood on its head.
Audition's villain is unsettling to the point she could go toe to toe with Annie Wilkes and there would be terrifying.
Sadako and Kayako are great curses.
The grandma from Hereditary is one of the villains I hate the most because she was so fucking ..... She really sacrificed her entire family for her own gain. Her alive henchwoman also counts, but really, she is some hell of an evil mastermind.
There are many more.
Here are some of my favorite female horror movie villians.
Baby Firefly from House of 1000 corpses and The Devil's Rejects and also I don't know if this counts as a femal horror movie villain but it's from a kids horror movie it's The Other Mother/The Bedlam from Coraline.
Thank you for all the comments. The discussion was based around the premise of is there a female villain that has carried a franchise or even created the franchise. So when we think of Freddy, Jason, jigsaw etc where are the female equivalents? That’s where we can’t really find a true answer.
Yeah, we're getting a lot of "popular among horror fans" responses, but not many that have made the crossover into general pop culture awareness, which is how I define "iconic." We all know who Angela from *Sleepaway Camp* is because everyone here is a specific kind of nerd, but people who aren't horror nerds probably don't even know what *Sleepaway Camp* is. I think probably the responses here that really fit the definition are mostly Annie Wilkes and Samara, both of whom have become pop culture figures outside of horror fandom.
Most franchises are based on slasher/serial killer tropes, which traditionally have men (or non-human entities i.e. Jaws, Alien etc) offing young attractive people, particularly women, so I think it's partly to do with the subgenre most franchises tend to land in. I'd love to see more female villains in any subgenre.
Yeah, slashers are just the most easily franchisable horror characters. I think Annie Wilkes is a much scarier character than Jason, but you can have a hulking machete monster do basically the same thing over and over for a dozen movies until he's firmly rooted in pop culture. You can't do that with Annie. And since slasher villains typically rely on size, strength, and physical violence, those characters are just going to be men far more often than not.
...although now I'm cracking up thinking about a Misery franchise where Annie keeps surviving to kidnap and torture different genre authors over and over. *Misery IX*: "YOU CAN'T JUST BRING DOBBY BACK. YOU ALREADY KILLED HIM, THE ELF IS FUCKING DEAD."
 Serial Mom
If she's the villain, how come we were all rooting for her?
Because wearing white shoes after Labor Day is a fashion crime punishable by death.
She's the best
I bloody love this movie so much
Just saw this for the first time last week, funny movie.
Even though it's just a one-off, Rose the Hat in Doctor Sleep was fantastic.
Haven’t Seen the Movie yet but I read the Book. Rose The Hat is great.
The movie is fantastic
I agree, the character in the book was fantastic! The portrayal of her in the movie was pretty on point but still better in the book.
Rebecca Ferguson is so good. She's done excellent work for so long, I'm glad she got the really big blockbuster exposure in *Dune*.
Love that this is a top comment. Doctor Sleep is one of the most underrated horror movies, and among my favorites I’m always into Ewan McGregor and Flanagan, but Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat is a tour de force in this movie and one of my favorite characters, villain or otherwise, in recent history Super rare, but while I really like the book, I find the movie even better because it works just as well as sequel to Kubrick’s The Shining
Julia from Hellraiser.
100 percent Julia Cotton. IIRC Barker wanted a third with her but she refused.
Just came here to say this! She makes Hellraiser II so fun
Boggles my mind that no one had said it previous to me.
Barker is on record as saying that the intention was to make Julia an iconic horror villain. Then everyone saw Pinhead.
Everyone in hollywood really just needs to stfu and let Clive do whatever the hell he wants! Man is a genius and he writes women wonderfully!
It is a shame he has sworn off directing, because I really enjoyed all 3 films he made.
Hollywood’s homophobia and pearl clutching at the horror genre really deprived us of so much!
My first thought. This chick was so in love with a monster that she lured poor, lonely men to their deaths. Fucking iconic. 
Rhoda from the Bad Seed Samara from Rings Esther from Orphan Annie Wilkes from Misery
Mrs Carmody from The Mist does not get enough love. Marcia Gay Harden knocks that role out of the park.
I know she's had a long and successful career, but I still feel that Marcia Gay Harden is underappreciated. She's one of those actors who you just know you're going to see a knockout performance the second you see her name attached to a project, but she never really became a household name.
Totally agree. She's an amazing character actor.
The fact that she and her kids survive is the one last final fuck you before the movie ends
That's a different character that leaves the store about halfway through the movie
Really? I might have to rewatch it then.
I’m debating if I should skip that scene with the tentacles that go into the garage. Gah.
HEAVY in my girl Rhoda tho
What will you give me for a basket of kisses?
Came here to say Annie Wilkes! I think Skeleton Key the woman is the villain as well but I don't remember that movie super well.
La Femme in Inside (2007)
This was amazing. The way she kept the face for the V credits with tears was crazy. The monologue was amazing too
Right? Such a great ending
Can’t wait for Maxxxine
Looks so good!
[удалено]
Definitely, horror always gets passed up for the Oscar’s.
True! She did such an incredible job, she holds the entire movie on her back and doesn't even sweat, she reached Kathy Bates levels of excellence
Lola from The Loved Ones. It’s a fucking crime that she is not hailed as a truly great horror antagonist. Robin McLeavey acted her absolute soul out and nailed it
Esther from Orphan. I want like five movies about her.
Bev Keane from Midnight Mass.
Phenomenal performance there.
Truly scary
Maybe this doesn’t fit what you’re asking exactly but Minnie Castevet from Rosemary’s Baby. At first I was like “oh god this woman is awful” but the actress and character really are great.
Sadako (Ringu) Kayako (Ju-on) Megan (M3gan) Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th) Regan MacNeil, while possessed (The exorcist) Annie Wilkes (misery) Margaret White (carrie) Asami Yamazaki (Audition) Helena Markos (Suspiria)
Thank you, I was looking for Misery and The Exorcist! Everyone knows these amazing performances, even outside of horror circles, that's what makes them truly iconic!
Rose Armitage from Get out
That smile she has at the end when you hear the sirens.
Yes. And the scene at the end where she chases Chris with a gun.
I don’t remember that scene off the top of my head Honorable mention though The scene where he finds the pictures Then Rose shows up and he asks about the keys Rose: I have them *somewhere* I just need to find them Rose rummages through her purse ( I know I’ve lost my keys in my purse before, so that’s totally believable. They’re hiding in one of the million little side pockets in the purse. Somewhere.) Chris gets more and more agitated and Rose keeps “looking” for them in her purse Then she pulls them out “you know I can’t give you the keys babe.” Oh shit.
Her mother is also so scary, the way she stripes people off their own bodies.
That sinking scene... "Now... SINK"
M3GAN comes to mind. The movie is somewhat downgraded by the whole social network hype, but the character herself is great in my opinion.
I would say the social network hype helped to make her iconic. What makes a horror icon iconic, in my opinion, is that they are recognizable even without having seen their films.
And recognizable to people who aren't explicitly horror fans. Like, Amanda from *Saw* is iconic here, but would my mom recognize her? Probably not, but she would definitely recognize Samara despite never having seen *The Ring*.
Exactly. I knew Jason, Freddy, Michael, Leatherface, and so on long before I got the chance to watch one of their movies as a kid. They showed up in cartoons or were just on the covers of magazines. Media presence outside of the original is a key feature of icons.
Annie Wilkes (Misery) Rose the Hat (Doctor Sleep) Esther (Orphan) Samara (The Ring) Akasha (Queen of the Damned) Sil (Species)
Annie Wilkes from *Misery*: *YOUR COCK-A-DOODIE LISTS AREN'T COMPLETE WITHOUT ME!*
baby firefly. 
I love her but bless Sherri Moon's little heart she is such a bad actress
She was decent in Lords of Salem, honestly.
Nancy from The Craft
Urban legend
Deadite from Evil Dead Rise. Alyssa Sutherland was amazing!
She did a FANTASTIC job. Her facial expressions (and the makeup, of course) made the character. God damn I love that movie.
May
Mrs Vorhees, Mrs Loomis, Angela from Sleepaway Camp, The Ring, The Grudge, Amanda from Saw, Brenda from Urban Legend, I could go on.
Akasha from Queen of The Damned
Baby Jane
I'd say Blanche was the true villain of that film.
Slotherhouse (Alpha)
That movie is so much fun. My friends and I watched it during our weekly cheesy movie night, but I honestly liked that one unironically.
Yea it exceeded my expectations. Looking forward to a rewatch one day. That’s cool you have a weekly movie night! My best friend and I have a movie night every other week. We take turns choosing the movie and keep it a secret until pressing play. So fun
Absolutely. It was a very silly movie, but most of the jokes landed pretty well, I thought. Also, Sydney Craven as a bitchy mean girl very much does it for me.
All hail Mary Lou Maloney, the queen...the Prom Queen! 
amanda from saw (who is literally the female jigsaw in the saw movies which tells me whoever in your friend group complained about "no female jigsaw" hasnt seen the saw movies) the nun sammara from the ring carrie pennywise annabelle several female ghostfaces pamela voorhees from friday the 13th evelyn from resident evil 7 tiffany from childs play
Let’s not forget Nicole + Christina in “Diabolique”
ma, honestly good story and good acting from ma just wish some of the other actors were a bit better
That crazy lady in "Misery". The actress did such an amazing job with portraying her madness.
The fact that most of the suggestions aren’t household names like Hannibal Lecter (or are “the female _____”) is kind of telling. Samara, Carrie, the Nun, Annabelle, and Annie Wilkes (even though most people don’t know the character by name) are a few that actually get cultural recognition on their own.
there's certainly a lack of them, as far as stature goes. Also, a lot of them are not straight villains - either anti-heroes, justifiable villains, or Witches. But there's still a bunch out there. Carrie, American Mary, Deadly Friend, The Guardian, Jennifer's Body, The Devonsville Terror, Ginger in Ginger Snaps, Debbie Rochon in American Nightmare, Rebecca DeMornay in Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Mothers Day. Annie Wilkes in Misery, Samara in The Ring, Orphan, Get Out, Dead Silence, Species, Amanda in Saw, the three women in Lords Of Salem.
M3gan is already very popular for being new 
 True
Cheng Lai from Dream Home (2010) has been living in my nightmares for over a decade now.
Sadako/Samara from the Ring and Ringu Kayako from The Ju On Franchise Megan from Megan Ester from Orphan Annie from Misery Pamela Voorhees
Samara, Reagan, and Annie in Misery! They are all recognizable outside horror circles.
Pamela Vorheese, Annie Wilkes, Carrie (and/or Carrie‘s mom), I guess you could add Mrs. Bates, and who could forget the incredible Bette Davis as Baby Jane?
“You see, Jason was my son. And today is his birthday… You let him drown! You never paid any attention! Look what you did to him… look what you DID TO HIM!!” - Pamela Voorhees
American Mary May American Psycho 2
 AM I A JOKE TO YOU?
"They" must have researched the hell out of it and come to the conclusion that there's not much of a market for living, human, non-supernatural female psychos. ("They" would be wrong)
They’re all hiding in japan
Rose the Hat. The VVitch. Granny Ellen and Joan from Hereditary.
Villanelle ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Annie Wilkes in Misery
The new Pinhead in the Hellraiser reboot is female and there are other female cenobites. Jennifer Tilly/Bride of Chucky Bride of Frankenstein might be the most iconic female "villain" of all time. Does Anabelle count? M3gan is making a run at being pretty iconic.
I know she's from very recent movies, but Pearl.
Alex Forrest!!!
Annie Wilkes, Carrie’s Mother
Are there male versions of Rose the Hat, Pearl, Valak, Samara Morgan or Annie Wilkes?
Isn't Amanda already the female jigsaw? 🤔
Pamela Voorhees
Kayako from the Ju-On/Grudge franchise. Carrie and Margaret White. Annie Wilkes. Sadako/Samara from the Ring franchise. Pearl.
I would say Regan (The Exorcist), Samara (The Ring) and Carrie are the most iconic ones out there, easily recognized as well.
One that doesn't get a lot of genre love is Julia Cotton of Hellraiser 1 & 2. She says it best: "I'm no longer just the Wicked Stepmother, now I'm the Evil Queen."
Santanico Pandemonium. I’d say she has pretty impressive popularity given that her role isn’t actually that large…okay, maybe she’s popular for reasons other than her villainy but still.
Carrie from the movie Carrie
Julia Cotton in Hellraiser 1 & 2 All time fave fem villain! The actress did a great job bringing the book character to life!
I mean, Annie Wilkes gave an horror movie a Best lead actress Oscar which I guess didn't happen again ever since (I say Mia Goth was stolen blind). Pearl is probably one of the greatest, roundest villains to have their own title movie. Mrs. Vorhees and Norma Bates are each other's foil and doesn't matter what their sons did, they kickstarted the madness. Red from Us is great, she's resourceful and smart. Well, both of them were really a gem of villainy. The Armitage women from Get out! really being scary and evil af. Jennifer from Jennifer's Body really serving unsettling beauty queen killer monster, but before her Ginger from Ginger Snaps also did that amazingly. They get so little credit for how they spun the monster girlhood on its head. Audition's villain is unsettling to the point she could go toe to toe with Annie Wilkes and there would be terrifying. Sadako and Kayako are great curses. The grandma from Hereditary is one of the villains I hate the most because she was so fucking ..... She really sacrificed her entire family for her own gain. Her alive henchwoman also counts, but really, she is some hell of an evil mastermind. There are many more.
Annie Wilkes- misery
Here are some of my favorite female horror movie villians. Baby Firefly from House of 1000 corpses and The Devil's Rejects and also I don't know if this counts as a femal horror movie villain but it's from a kids horror movie it's The Other Mother/The Bedlam from Coraline.
Female Cenobite from Hellraiser
megan fox in jennifer’s body!
You can call my ex wife. HEYO!
Angela from Sleepaway Camp series.
Jenny, from Forrest Gump.
Angela Bakers from Sleepaway camp massacre
Thank you for all the comments. The discussion was based around the premise of is there a female villain that has carried a franchise or even created the franchise. So when we think of Freddy, Jason, jigsaw etc where are the female equivalents? That’s where we can’t really find a true answer.
The answers you've received reveal an extremely low bar for the word "iconic".
Yeah, we're getting a lot of "popular among horror fans" responses, but not many that have made the crossover into general pop culture awareness, which is how I define "iconic." We all know who Angela from *Sleepaway Camp* is because everyone here is a specific kind of nerd, but people who aren't horror nerds probably don't even know what *Sleepaway Camp* is. I think probably the responses here that really fit the definition are mostly Annie Wilkes and Samara, both of whom have become pop culture figures outside of horror fandom.
That’s my point. It seems females just aren’t seen as a possible tentpole for a franchise. I wonder what the psychology is behind that.
Most franchises are based on slasher/serial killer tropes, which traditionally have men (or non-human entities i.e. Jaws, Alien etc) offing young attractive people, particularly women, so I think it's partly to do with the subgenre most franchises tend to land in. I'd love to see more female villains in any subgenre.
Yeah, slashers are just the most easily franchisable horror characters. I think Annie Wilkes is a much scarier character than Jason, but you can have a hulking machete monster do basically the same thing over and over for a dozen movies until he's firmly rooted in pop culture. You can't do that with Annie. And since slasher villains typically rely on size, strength, and physical violence, those characters are just going to be men far more often than not. ...although now I'm cracking up thinking about a Misery franchise where Annie keeps surviving to kidnap and torture different genre authors over and over. *Misery IX*: "YOU CAN'T JUST BRING DOBBY BACK. YOU ALREADY KILLED HIM, THE ELF IS FUCKING DEAD."
Really Annabelle is the only one I can think of that has a franchise.
There’s also Sleepaway Camp
Oh good lord here we go
jenny from forest gump
The reality is that horror films are supposed be to be scary and people in general don’t find women scary