20 best movie villains of all time

Chucky (Child’s Play)

Freddy Krueger is terrifying because he attacks people in their sleep, but Chucky is scary because he comes in the least suspecting package possible: a toy. Obviously movies like Child’s Play and more recently Annabelle have made us suspicious of any creepy-looking dolls, but back when Child’s Play first came out in 1988, nobody would have ever suspected a killer doll.

Chucky is actually Charles Lee Ray, a criminal who gets shot in a robbery gone wrong and is left to die by his partner in crime. He manages to crawl his way to a toy store and uses an amulet to put his soul into a doll before he dies. That doll was a Good Guy doll, with freckles, orange hair, and overalls. He’s adorable…but evil! A woman purchases the doll the next day for her son’s birthday, and that’s when bad things start to happen.

The little boy, Andy, starts getting implicated in some pretty serious crimes, like the murder of his babysitter, or an explosion that leaves Chucky’s old accomplice dead. It’s obviously Chucky who’s doing everything, but who would ever believe that the doll is killing people?

While the films in the Child’s Play franchise have gotten progressively worse, making more of a joke out of the character of Chucky and going for a slasher-comedy vibe, the original Chucky movies still can’t be beat. A killer doll nobody would ever suspect has to be one of the best horror villains in history. Anybody could be a serial killer with a dark past, but how many have had their soul put into an innocent toy in order to continue their life of crime without facing the repercussions?