Six Archetypes for the Horror Baddies We Love (A Chart)

A quick overview of archetypes, for the uninitiated (those who slept through English class): archetypes are, essentially, cliché classes that fictional characters fall into. Using a known archetype can help people understand the context of the characters in a given story, even if they don’t understand the world or setting. A good example of traditional archetypes is in Star Wars. Dynamic fantasy stories are said to include the hero archetype (Luke), the damsel-in-distress archetype (Leia), the rebellious one with a heart of gold (Han Solo), the villain (Darth Vader). For the nerds out there (I see you), let’s put it in D&D terms – Luke is a Paladin, Leia is a Cleric, Han is a rogue, Vader is… probably a fallen Paladin. Anyway, that’s archetypes. 

Horror movies have their tropey archetypes already, and you’re probably familiar with them – the Final Girl is one (Laurie Strode, Sidney Prescott, Buffy, Ripley, and on & on), Creepy Kids (Damien, Regan, Rhoda from the Bad Seed’ Children of the Corn), the old man who warns the teenagers not to venture forth. And loosely, we probably have some archetypes for the stars of our twisted picture shows – but I’ve decided, for no good reason, to boil ‘em down to six solid archetypes.

I believe that all monsters and, by extension, all movie villains, can fit into Rosy’s Six Archetypes For Rude Dudes which we can call, Column A. To avoid adding more archetypes, because I like the number six, I’ve put together nine modifiers, which we will call Column B. Each monster/villain fits into one archetype from Column A, and gets 2-3 modifiers from Column B. Let’s take a look and take her for a test drive, shall we?

So, using the above chart, here are some of my personal categorizations for some famously rude dudes. 

• Jason Voorhees:Strong and Silent, sympathetic & vengeful. 
• Pinhead: Cold and Calculating, otherworldly, satanic & self-aware.
• Freddy Krueger: Unhinged, self-aware & chaotic.
• Dracula: Parasitic, sympathetic & hyper-focused. 
• Godzilla: Colossal, chaotic & otherworldly. 
• Chucky: Unhinged, intelligent & hyper-focused.
• Audrey II: Parasitic, otherworldly & hyper-focused.
• Leatherface: Animalistic, unintelligent & chaotic.
• Frankenstein’s Monster: Strong & Silent, sympathetic & unintelligent
• Hannibal Lecter: Cold & Calculating, intelligent & self-aware.
• Michael Myers: Strong & Silent, otherworldly & hyper-focused. 
• Ghostface: Unhinged, chaotic & vengeful (in every iteration!)
• Pazuzu: Parasitic, chaotic & satanic. 

Those are just a few examples. Try it for yourself! Are there any baddies that don’t fit the chart? Do you disagree with any of the above? Let us know in the comments! 

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