Top 13: Greatest Performances In Horror Cinema

Horror films never quite get their due.

Particularly actors in horror films. For every Sir Anthony Hopkins or Kathy Bates (two tremendous, Oscar-winning horror performances), there are countless performances relegated to “genre work” that fail to be taken as seriously as they deserve. Tops on that list, in my opinion, is Toni Collette’s gut-wrenching work in Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Collette received a handful of critics’ prizes and a hefty amount of online buzz for her work, but Oscar failed to come knocking for her terrifying performance. More on her work later, of course, but she’s only one example of many.

Enter Demi Moore who is receiving the best reviews of her career in this weekend’s The Substance. Directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance is both a David Cronenberg-esqe body horror film that satirizes Hollywood and its obsession with youth and beauty. When the film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, Moore went on a few Best Actress lists for her work, and a nomination isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Even though this feels like an incredibly competitive year, Moore has a strong narrative supporting her: she’s never been nominated after decades of consistent work, she was the target of much gossip and derision after her highly publicized plastic surgery around Charlie’s Angels, and she’s reportedly excellent in the film. Plus, the film received a screenplay award at Cannes, which clever marketing teams can use to legitimize her campaign.

There are factors against a Moore nomination (intense competition, an untested distributor in Mubi, genre bias, etc), but time and a supportive box office will tell whether or not she can land.

Until then, I thought I’d take a look at some of the greatest performances (both Oscar nominated and ignored) in horror cinema in honor of The Substance‘s nationwide release this weekend.

When I sat down to make this list, I had an incredibly difficult time narrowing down my favorite horror performances. I’m including a group of honorable mentions because I just couldn’t post this without recognizing great work that just missed the top 13. In some cases, it just came down to screen time. I know I’m probably going to leave off some very great and highly acclaimed work, so feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments below.

Until then, here we go!

Honorable Mentions

These are the ones that hurt…

Betty Gabriel only has a few precious minutes of screen time in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but you cannot imagine the film without her. Her above-included “No, No, No” scene became an instant, iconic contribution to the language of cinema. She was so beloved at the time that some included her in their Best Supporting Actress mentions of the year despite limited screen time. Audiences understood that something wasn’t quite right with the Armitage household, and Gabriel’s essential performance confirmed it. Stellar work.

Drew Barrymore‘s Scream performance started an entire sub-genre of mimicking performances, but they aren’t making fun of her. Instead, she delivered an incredible, committed, and deeply terrified performance that audiences will never forget. It’s no spoiler that she dies within the first few minutes of Wes Craven’s horror classic, an ode to another iconic horror performance — Janet Leigh’s in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. But Barrymore has never been this good before, and it makes compelling evidence that she should not have lingered in the romantic comedy genre.

I’m not a huge fan of The Exorcist. I know that’s probably a taste crime to many who love the horror genre, but the film never connected with me or scared me in any way. But there’s no denying that Ellen Burstyn‘s performance as Chris MacNeil, mother to the possessed Regan (Linda Blair, also great in a justifiably over the top performance), is among the best in any horror film. She received multiple awards nominations, including a Best Actress Oscar mention, which was a rarity at the time for a horror genre film. She deserved all of the accolades because she understood that the heart of the character was as simple as a mother’s love for her daughter. That primal emotion carried many through the more extreme supernatural elements of William Friedkin’s beloved film.

Nicole Kidman‘s work in The Others probably would have received an Oscar nomination had it not come out the same year as her nominated performance in Moulin Rouge!. Her deeply committed work here underscores the subtle horror of the piece without showy special effects. She IS the special effect, helping ground the narrative in real human emotion. She pairs perfectly with Burstyn in this way.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Jennifer Jason Leigh about her (criminally overlooked) work in Fargo. During the conversation, we chatted briefly about how impactful her early work was on my cinematic upbringing, particularly her nightmarish turn in Barbet Schroeder’s Single White Female. Part of the incredibly popular sub-genre of “… From Hell” films (here, “roommate from hell”), Single White Female unfairly pits Leigh against a very nice Bridget Fonda, but Leigh plays on an entirely different level, diving headfirst into her overwhelmingly convincing portrait of a disturbed woman that it (like many other Leigh performances) turned audiences away from embracing her talents for years. What’s so charming is that Leigh isn’t like any of her performances in real life, and she’s blissfully unaware of how impactful her delivery of the line “I like my hair like this” was to millions at the time.

13. JoBeth Williams / Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist

There will be a few performances that I’m grouping together because they work so well in tandem within the context of the horror film. The first pairing are JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson for Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist. Williams and Nelson are perfectly cast as the hapless, perfectly suburban parents battling supernatural forces who have kidnapped their daughter (memorably played by the late Heather O’Rourke). Their performances oscillate between genuine wonder and abject horror at what plagues their family. My best friend and I routinely cite Nelson’s iconic line, “You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn’t you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones!” And few actors are as committed in a special effects-driven film as Williams, anchoring Poltergeist in deeply felt emotion. Bonus points to her for enduring the pool scene with actual skeletons, something she didn’t know until after the fact.

12. Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween Series

Halloween would not resonate today without Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s impossible to imagine any kind of horror performance list without including her work not only in the classic original but in the recent revival trilogy as well. Say what you will about the quality of the films, Curtis’s work remains committed and strong. Omitting some of the more regrettable choices made in the superfluous sequels, it’s fascinating to watch Curtis navigate Laurie Strode from innocent, perennial virgin teen to deeply troubled PTSD survivor. She won an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once, but you’ll never convince me that happened without an acknowledgement of her lifetime of work in the horror genre.

11. Mia Goth in the X Trilogy (X, Pearl, MaXXXine)

People seemed to sleep on Mia Goth‘s astounding performance across Ti West’s X trilogy. She’s very good in the first film, but she’s a force of nature in the bizarre (in the best possible way) sequel Pearl. Here, in a role she carefully honed with West, Goth portrays the younger version of a key character in X, finding a way to honor “women’s pictures” of the 1940s and 1950s through a horror lens. She’s also very good in the lesser sequel MaXXXine, but Pearl shows Goth has depths yet to be revealed as an actress. Martin Scorsese would agree.

10. Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

I have loved Francis Ford Coppola’s take on the Dracula legend since November 13, 1992, when I saw it at the Plaza Cinema in Greenville, NC. It’s a bonkers, gorgeous, and brilliantly made horror film with (and I’m being kind here) very erratic performances. But Gary Oldman as Dracula anchors the entire film with an inventive, intriguing, and yes romantic performance as the doomed prince. I included the rehearsal version of his climactic scene with co-star Winona Ryder and the finished version to show his commitment to the role. Plus, his take on Dracula as an eccentric hermit at the beginning of the film gave a new resonance and depth to the character.

9. Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear

Juliette Lewis and Robert DeNiro received Oscar nominations for Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear remake, largely I think due to the second clip above. For me, however, Jessica Lange‘s performance stands firmly with them, and she should have been nominated for Best Actress. Granted, I’m a sucker for a Lange performance, but I’ve never forgotten her endgame scene where she tries to convince DeNiro’s Max Lady to rape her instead of her daughter (Lewis). “We have this connection you and I,” she warbles in that trademark Lange tremble. And Lewis perfectly embodies the role of the rebellious, tentatively sexual teenager who, like Red Riding Hood, realizes she may have stepped too far into the wolf’s den in her classic scene with DeNiro.

8. Sigourney Weaver in Aliens

What can you say about Sigourney Weaver‘s Oscar-nominated work in Aliens that hasn’t already been said? She’s the pinnacle of kick-ass. She’s emotional when she needs to be. She’s shell-shocked when she needs to be. She takes charge when she needs to. It’s a dream role for any actress, and one perfectly suited for the steely Weaver.

7. Toni Collette in Hereditary

Frequently cited as The Horror Performance That Got Away, Toni Collete‘s work in Ari Aster’s Hereditary ranks amongst her very best work. Yes, she was great in The Sixth Sense (Oscar nominated), but Hereditary takes her to an entirely different level as the mother grieving her daughter’s gruesome death. The dinner scene alone should have warranted an Oscar nomination, but I suspect the film’s really “out there” ending (not to mention the previously mentioned gruesome death of her daughter) likely turned away any curious voters. Here, she plummets the depths of grief and generational trauma and dares to ask the audience to sympathize with a mother who completely blames her son for her daughter’s death. It’s a towering, near-demonic performance that will always be remembered as one of Collette’s very best.

6. Kathy Bates in Misery

Kathy Bates‘s Oscar win in 1991 for Rob Reiner’s Misery remains one of my favorite all-time award wins. When I was a kid, I didn’t know about “award performances.” I didn’t know that the Academy had certain tastes. I didn’t know about prestige films or things like that. Misery came around just as I was really starting to dive into the Oscar world, and Bates’s work perhaps gave me a then-false understanding that films I loved could win awards too. Silence of the Lambs would only continue to misguide me down that path. As Annie Wilkes, Bates avoids monster-movie clichés to reveal the character’s wounded and permanently damaged soul. Bates would later top this performance with Dolores Claiborne, but that’s not a horror film. Misery very much ranks among the best of the Stephen King horror films.

5. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in Carrie

Another Stephen King cinematic adaptation, Carrie bursts onto the screen with (tele)kinetic energy thanks to Brian DePalma’s brilliant direction and two astounding performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. As the tormented, sheltered Carrie White, Spacek brings such a vivid naivety to the role, which works beautifully as Carrie becomes an other-worldly demon exacting revenge by the end of the film. Totally contrasting, Laurie never once makes Mrs. White a human character. Instead, she’s an archetype of a religious zealot, the kind everyone assumes always lives behind every church door. The wildly, violently contrasting performances work best when paired together — the tragedy of two souls who desperately need each other but will never find common ground.

4. Lupita Nyong’o in Us

Jordan Peele’s divisive and completely bizarre horror film Us features a bonkers lead performance from Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave). It’s a minor spoiler, if you haven’t seen the film, to say that she plays a dual role, and she creates two distinctly unique characterizations with ease. I haven’t seen her reportedly brilliant work in this summer’s A Quiet Place prequel, but for me, there are few better horror performances than hers in Us. Peele asks a great deal from her as an actress, and she refreshingly goes for it without hesitation or vanity and delivers a performance that is both heartbreaking and incredibly scary.

3. Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in The Shining.

The late, great Shelley Duvall received a Best Actress award for Robert Altman’s 3 Women at the Cannes Film Festival back in 1977. The awards trajectory never followed through despite Duvall giving one of cinema’s most iconic horror performances in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (another Stephen King adaptation). In fact, she received a Razzie nomination for the work, which that horrid association has rightfully revoked. Kubrick likely tortured Duvall emotionally so that she could plumb the emotional violence put upon her character, Wendy Torrence, by her husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), while snowbound at the isolated Overlook Hotel. Nicholson’s performance is the one people remember and comment on today, but it’s Duvall’s initially detached work that unsettles the viewer as she slowly comes to the realization that her husband was insane all along.

2. Anthony Perkins in Psycho

Janet Leigh got the Oscar nomination for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, but it’s Anthony Perkins‘s revelatory work as Norman Bates that has stood the test of time. Relying on his matinee idol good looks, Perkins was the perfect choice to play the demented Bates. He masters Norman’s ticks and stutters and insecurities while making the audience root for the young boy whose Mother just won’t leave him alone. Perkins was so convincing as Bates that he likely never escaped the confines of a role well-executed. Leigh was great, of course, but the Academy should have recognized Perkins with a Best Actor nomination. But, then again, we do all go a little mad sometimes…

1. Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs

Arguably more a thriller than a horror film, Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs is still widely recognized as the only horror film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Its two leads, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, received Best Actor and Best Actress wins, marking not only two of the best horror performances in cinematic history but two of the best performances in film ever. And the thing is, I’m not sure each actor is as good without the other. As evidenced by their final encounter, theirs is a deep, resonant, bizarre, toxic connection, and Hopkins and Foster revel in fully realizing the sick depths they will go. The film is iconic. The dialogue is iconic. The performances are iconic. Good luck trying to top them.