20 Scariest Female Horror Villains

Sheila Vand as The Girl (Image via VICE Films)

11. The Girl (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night)

Now, I’m not entirely sure that I should classify “The Girl” as a villain, exactly. She’s more of an anti-hero, being a vampire who murders supposedly evil people. Still, she is such a perfectly menacing, complicated figure that it would be a crime not to discuss her in some form.

First of all, the cinematography of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is breathtaking. The Iranian film, directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, is shot entirely in black and white and seems to exist in an imaginary noir underworld. Indeed, Amirpour has described it as an “Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western”.

The long, lingering shots underscore both the menace and attraction of The Girl, who embodies a kind of dark manic pixie dream girl aesthetic. She glides around on a skateboard, seemingly unafraid to be alone in a rough neighborhood, clad in a billowing black chador. The Girl also wears heavy eyeliner and dances alone in her bedroom.

It’s almost too much, but then you remember that she’s also a vampire with a deadly, if ill-defined agenda. While Amirpour claims that The Girl was not created to be an agent of revenge against men, it’s certainly easy to see her as such. After all, she only attacks men and spares the one woman who crosses her path. The Girl is a deadly agent of something, at least, but a discerning one.