15 Most Common Horror Movie Stereotype Characters

Horror is one of those movie genres that seem to be perennially popular. It’s not hard to see why. The genre is built on the thrill and excitement of terror, of encouraging the viewer to feel as if their body is as vulnerable to destruction as that of the characters. And, of course, there is also the thrill of seeing other people find themselves in terrifying situations, even as the viewer (supposedly) knows more than the characters.

It also helps that horror, like many other genres, has several stereotypical characters that it typically includes, with only minor variations.

Updated on January 12th, 2021 by Zach Gass: It takes a special cast of people to bring a classic horror movie to life, whether it’s the maniac in the mask or the final girl that escapes his fiendish clutches. Some of these roles have become blatant stereotypes, but others have become timeless tropes that practically all movies in the genre need to function. But when the genre evolves from the standard slasher, jock, nerd, and dumb-blonde characters, sometimes a little extra casting is required to make the story more interesting and to make the body count rise.

15 The Entity

Where some horror movie villains might be the typical muscle-bound monster, a masked murderer, or deranged psychopath, there’s a special kind of fun to be had with an evil supernatural entity, demon, or spirit. Otherworldly evils have their own dangers and diabolical deeds, no machete or hockey mask needed.

From creatures like Pennywise or the Babbadook to malevolent beings like Annabelle or the demons of the Further, this collection of creeps comes with some seriously tough customers.

14 The Harbinger

“Goin’ to camp blood, ain’tcha?” “Don’t fall asleep.” “Sometimes… dead is better.” No matter what the movie is, there is always someone, an old man, a grieving woman, or other survivor, out there who warns the group of soon-to-be victims.

Normally, this poor sucker is ignored and, on rare occasion, he joins the body count as another victim. But to say the characters in the flick aren’t warned would be entirely untrue.

13 The Pawn

The pawn is a rather complex individual, but the horrorshow honestly couldn’t start without them. Simply put, they are responsible for the carnage that befalls the rest of the victims.

They’re the ones that open the box that shouldn’t be open, mess with a demonic boardgame, disturb the abandoned summer camp, or in the case of Leatherface, be the stooge used by the true movie’s villains. Either way, someone’s getting used for evil intent.

12 The Scholar

The Scholar gets some serious props for being one of the most versatile horror characters in existence. They can be a scientist trying to stop an evil monster, a historian that accidentally unleashes a demon, or a researcher looking to raise the dead, or even just a simple victim. It’s pretty much fair game.

It’s not always a good idea to be a nerd in a horror flick, but sometimes being smart can save one’s life. Or shorten it… Depends on the director.

11 The Hunter

These guys are what even the score for the slaughter. Big-time players like Dr. Loomis, Ellen Ripley, and the original Abraham Van Helsing have been sending slashers, monsters, and madmen running since the early days of the genre.

These guys might be the ones to come in and save the day, give the final girl a chance to escape or fight back, or they just might be outmatched by the killer and end up a victim themselves. Still, it’s usually an interesting match.

10 The Cop

There is almost always a cop present in a horror movie, usually telling the young people to be careful, or just being generally unpleasant, sometimes to such an extent that they might be seen as the potential villain. Of course, said cops are almost never available when the young people inevitably find themselves at the mercy of some sort of murderer or monster.

In the worst-case scenario, they are either complicit in the evil deeds or they are killed themselves, thus rendering their status as protectors moot.

9 The Final Girl

This figure is in some ways the most important and enduring one, particularly in the slasher films that were so popular during the 1970s and 1980s. She is typically the only one who survives the slaughter that takes place during the film, and she usually gets the opportunity to take down the villain. Although that victory is usually shown to be incomplete at best and futile at worst. A seminal example of the final girl is Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode from Halloween.

Sometimes, the film might have a young man survive to the end rather than a girl, but that is considerably unusual for the genre.

8 The Jock

It’s probably not surprising that many horror movies because they are designed to appeal to young people, would feature a jock. Every high school and college student knows what to expect from this particular character.

He typically embodies all of the things that American audiences expect from their male characters, and he’s often a bit of a jerk. It probably goes without saying that he almost never survives and is often one of the first characters to die.

7 The Bad Girl

The horror movie seems to have a particular fascination with women, and it usually presents them in a very particular fashion. While the final girl exhibits many of the traits that many people associate with the good girl — obeying rules, not being too sexual, and so on — the bad girl is the opposite of that. She will usually take pleasure in sexual affairs, and she often doesn’t really care too much about the other people in the group.

The killer will almost always go after her somewhere in the middle of his spree.

6 The Killer

Obviously, the killer is the most important figure in most horror movies. Sometimes it’s a monster, sometimes it’s a ghost, and sometimes it’s just a person who seems to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in slaughtering people.

In many ways, this character is the expression of all of the things that a given culture fears the most. At a broader level, the killer represents the fear of the unknown and of the ultimate ineffability of death itself.

5 The Old Person

Although horror movies are obsessed with young people, old people do have their own parts to play in most horror films. In most cases, the old person — and it can be either a man or a woman — is a sort of warning figure, who usually tells the young people to avoid whatever place it is that they’re going to.

At the same time, they also provide some much-needed information about the killer or creature, knowledge which the young people will most likely ignore at their own expense. They might or might not survive the general slaughter.

4 The Token

It has to be said that horror films have a bit of a problem when it comes to representation, and up until recently, there were relatively few horror films that had any significant amount of narrative time for people of color or other minorities.

Usually, there was one character who was seemingly designed to mark the “diversity” box for the film as a whole. It probably goes without saying that they almost never survive until the end of the film, and they are almost never the hero.

3 The Skeptic

Every horror film needs the skeptic, the person who doesn’t seem to want to believe anything that’s going on, or who wants to believe that there’s some sort of rational explanation for supernatural events (no matter how foolish such an idea sounds to those sitting in the audience).

Unfortunately, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, they’ll hold on to their sense of skeptical detachment right up until the point that they meet their doom at the hands of the very thing they don’t believe in.

2 The Sexy Couple

It’s also no secret that horror movies seem to take a rather dim view of sex, at least judging by the fact that the people who get caught having sex in the woods are usually some of the first to get cut down by the murderer.

It’s almost always a heterosexual and heteronormative couple, of course, and it suggests that premarital sex is something that is evil, dangerous, and, judging by how many sexy couples have met their doom in horror films, actually dangerous to one’s physical health.

1 The Hysteric

Among the many characters that typically appear in a horror film, the hysteric is usually one of the more irritating. It’s almost always a woman, but there are some notable exceptions to this rule. They seem to freak out about every single thing that happens, whether that’s hearing a strange but innocuous noise or something more serious.

Most horror films seem to go out of their way to make the audience want to see this person struck down by the murderer.

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