After one online forum member set out to find movies with the craziest, most evil women lead or supporting roles, the answers started pouring in. Here are the top picks for memorable films where the women leave you feeling seriously disturbed by their antics!
1. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Image Credit: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.
Rebecca De Mornay fits the bill to a “T” regarding being terrifyingly insane. She plays Peyton, a vindictive woman who seeks revenge against Clair Bartel. Claire was assaulted by her doctor, who is Peyton’s husband. He kills himself rather than go to jail, and his pregnant wife Peyton miscarries due to the stress. Peyton devises a plan to infiltrate Claire’s home by posing as a nanny for the Bartel family. Her goal is to destroy her love, seduce her husband, and murder Claire for supposedly ruining her life.
2. Orphan (2009)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Isabelle Fuhrman stars in the role of Esther, a seemingly unassuming and modest nine-year-old girl who is well-mannered. It turns out that Esther is anything but a nine-year-old girl; on the contrary, she’s a murderous 33-year-old woman with hypopituitary disease, a condition where her body growth stops at nine. She weasels her way into a loving family, posing as a nine-year-old to seduce her adoptive father and kill the mother who adopted her.
3. Misery (1990)
Image Credit Castle Rock Entertainment Nelson Entertainment
We rarely come across our idols or those that inspire us significantly. Kathy Bates stars as Annie Wilkes when she rescues a best-selling novelist from a car wreck. Fandom quickly morphs into obsession as Bates plays the compelling role of a detached fan who will stop at nothing to have her favorite novelist finish a book—even if it means holding him against his will.
4. Fatal Attraction (1987)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures.
Sometimes, what was supposed to be a meaningless fling, can become much more. Dan Gallagher, a happily married man with a loving daughter, finds this out the hard way when he has a casual fling with Alex—played by Glenn Close. Spurned by Dan, Alex becomes unhinged, and she begins stalking him obsessively. Dan realizes this is more serious than trying to hide an affair, but he has to save himself and his family because Alex will stop at nothing, including murder, to get what she wants.
5. Mommie Dearest (1981)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures.Faye Dunaway plays Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. Joan is a controlling, drunk, and maniacal woman who’s always vying to be the center of attention. She develops a toxic relationship with her daughter Christina who’s trying to escape her mother’s smothering and fanatical ways. And just when she thinks she has, she’s woefully mistaken.
6. Hereditary (2018)
Image Credit: PalmStar Media.
Toni Collette performs her role as Anne Graham masterfully. She begins as a loving mother who sees apparitions of her own dead mother. After her daughter’s bizarre death, she starts to lose her grip on reality. A spirit slowly possesses her, and her evil actions traverse into the demonic realm. She’s eventually seen levitating on the ceiling, on the verge of killing—she has some of the best jump scares of 2018.
7. Black Swan (2010)
Image Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Black Swan highlights the pressures of performing on the big stage. Natalie Portman, who plays Nina, becomes so unhinged that she even suffers from visual hallucinations. The line between her hallucinations and reality blur as the movie progresses. She eventually embraces the Black Swan persona, which results in a shocking and total metamorphosis by the film’s end, including her untimely death.
8. Basic Instinct (1992)
Image Credit: TriStar Pictures.
Catherine Tramell is a bold, savvy, and successful crime novelist who Sharon Stone plays perfectly. Tramell is connected to her boyfriend’s death, who mysteriously dies in the same way that one of her characters dies in her book. You eventually realize that she has flings with her victims and murders them using her novels as a source of inspiration.
9. To Die For (1995)
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing.
Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, a weather reporter with ambitions of being a news anchor. The catch is that Mrs. Stone feels that her middle-class husband is holding her back, so she arranges to have him murdered. She solicits the help of a high school friend who’s smitten with her, but things don’t go according to plan. She becomes a prime suspect in her husband’s death, looking for a way out, and she’s desperate.
10. Single White Female (1992)
Image Credit: Columbia Pictures.
In this psychological thriller, Jennifer Jason Leigh portrays Hedy Carlson, an obsessive and murderous roommate. What seems like a harmless bond between two friends quickly turns into the protagonist, Allie, realizing that the woman she shares an apartment with is consumed with imitating her. Hedy copies her hair, clothes, and mannerisms and eventually kills anyone else that wants Allie’s attention.
11. Get Out (2017)
Image Credit: Universal Pictures.
Get Out features Rose Armitage, who was portrayed by Allison Williams. The Armitage family is in the business of stealing black bodies for white people who’ve fetishized blackness. While on their deathbeds, their brains are transplanted into the black host. Rose is tasked with luring black men back to her hometown under the guise of romanticism to kidnap them and sell them to the highest bidder.
12. Us (2019)
Image Credit: Universal Pictures.
Lupita Nyong’o delivers a bone-chilling performance in her role as Red. This doppelganger is bent on killing her identical counterpart. In Us, there’s an alternate reality of the have-nots, and Red is the leader of that faction which has come to exact vengeance against the haves who’ve lived sumptuously at their expense.
13. Pearl (2022)
Image Credit: A24.
Mia Goth plays the role of Pearl, a woman in her twenties who exhibits all the trappings of a brimming serial killer. She abuses farm animals and her ailing father when the opportunity presents itself. Pearl longs to kill her father and end the suffering he causes the family. She confides to her romantic interest that she wishes her family were dead, and he encourages her to follow her dreams—which includes her family missing from the picture. Little would he know, he too would be on the wrong end of Pearl’s wrath.
14. The Babadook (2014)
Image Credit Causeway FilmsEssie Davis plays the role of Amelia, a widow who’s a newly single mother and spends only a portion of the film as the villain. However, she is eventually overtaken by an evil entity from a cursed children’s book. She turns into her son’s worst nightmare and menacingly chases him around the home. Super creepy.
15. Carrie (1976)
Image Credit: United Artists.
Piper Laurie plays the mother of the titular character Carrie. Margaret White, Carrie’s mother, is a psychopathic religious fanatic who believes that her daughter is constantly sinning and is the spawn of the devil. She is so far gone that she even believes that having Carrie was a sin in and of itself, and she blames herself for birthing her. Carry tries to be a normal kid, but her mom constantly tries to pray Carrie’s monster out.
16. The Exorcist (1973)
Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
Regan MacNeil is a 12-year-old girl played by Linda Blair, and she’s possessed by a demon. Her mom enlists the help of two men of God to help exorcise the terrible entity Pazuzu. Before long, the young girl is shouting obscenities, scaling the walls, spewing green vomit while her head spins around 360 degrees, and crawling like a spider up a flight of stairs. It gave me nightmares as a kid!
17. Species (1995)
Image Credit: MGM/UA Distribution Co.
Natasha Henstridge plays the role of an attractive humanoid alien named Sil. Sil escapes research custody in order to scour Los Angeles for a mate. So what’s the big deal? It’s the fact that she kills every male she mates with—on par with a female praying mantis. This film was both intriguing and highly disturbing.
18. Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Image Credit: Universal Pictures.
Lorna Raver plays Mrs. Sylvia Ganush, a desperate older woman who needs an extension on her home loan. Bank loan officer Christine heartlessly denies the desperate older lady embarrassingly. Mrs. Ganush procures a button from her coat to cast a spell and dooms Christine to the underworld in three days. I bet she wished she would have just approved the loan for all that!
19. Queen of the Damned (2002)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Akasha, played by Aaliyah, is a powerful vampire awoken by Lestat. During one of Lestat’s concerts, she arrives to kill everyone on site while scorching the ground in her wake. The movie memorializes the late actress Aaliyah who died in a plane crash before the film’s release.
20. Evil Dead (2013)
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing.
Jane Levy, as Mia, is brought to an isolated cabin as a form of rehabilitation to stem her drug addiction. While there, the group of friends finds an old book that reawakens the dead when read aloud. This supernatural evil force possesses Mia and uses her body to wreak havoc and terrorize the other travelers.
21. Titane (2021)
Image Credit: Diaphana Distribution.
Adrien, played by Agathe Rousselle, is an unhinged woman with a titanium plate fitted in her skull. She’s also a serial murderer. After being forced to go on the run, this crazy woman embarks on a journey of genuine love and self-discovery.
22. Ma (2019)
Image Credit: Universal Pictures.
Octavia Spencer steps into this cringe-inducing role as Sue Ann. What begins as boundary issues eventually morphs into a murderous revenge story. Ann, better known as Ma, awkwardly befriends a group of high schoolers when she offers her home as a place to kick it, drink alcohol, and do other illicit behaviors that teenagers should not engage in. Ma begins to be overbearing; she stalks the children in an attempt to avenge herself on them for the part that other people played in humiliating her in high school many years ago.
23. Monster (2003)
Image Credit: Newmarket Films.
Charlize Theron plays a prostitute named Aileen who gets brutally assaulted by one of the men she is servicing. She’s had enough and decides to go on the straight and narrow but doesn’t have the qualifications. She returns to a life of prostitution, but she’s not taking any mess this time. Aileen robs and kills her suitors for personal gain.
24. Friday the 13th (1980)
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures.
This classic horror film stars Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees, a murderous mother with a son who wields a machete. In this movie, Jason is not the villain; more aptly, it’s the mother who hunts down the counselors of Camp Crystal Lake as revenge for her boy dying under their watch.
