Horror loves itself a spooky (or spooked-out) husband, so we ranked our faves of the contemporary father field.
The best and worst scary movie daddies of modern horror cinema run the full gamut of good vs. evil, and often enough, a dash of dumb. Hey, if your family ends up in a haunted house, chances are it’s Dad’s fault, especially when it comes to some of our favorite spooky season shows and films.
There’s pure evil, such as Five Nights at Freddy’s William Afton. There are family-first daddies, as exemplified by Gomez Addams on Wednesday. And there’s, of course, that daddy factor, which allows for some of our favorite horror himbos to get away with ignoring the signs of danger as long as they get the family out to safety; looking at you, Winston Duke, in Jordan Peele’s Us.
To celebrate fathers of fright, here are our favorite horror movie (and TV show) daddies from recent years, ranked from monstrous worst to heroic best.11. William Afton, Five Nights at Freddy’s
Matthew Lillard as William Afton is one of the most despicable and demented dads of recent horror. He’s the father turned kids’ serial killer behind the haunted animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy’s who co-founded the family pizza chain, which he goes on to use the abandoned locations of to stage his horrific crimes.
Lillard really captures the energy of a terrible psycho who snaps and kills kids, sometimes enlisting the help of his daughter, who grows up to be a cop who helps take him down. Unfortunately for her, he stabs her in the process of their catching him. We’re excited to know Lillard will be joined by his horror husband, Skeet Ulrich, in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2; Ulrich is rumored to be Afton’s alleged silent partner, Henry Emily.
While FNAF fans know the deep lore of that potential pairing, we Scream fans were there when it was written in blood by the duo as the original Ghostface killers. As for why he’s at the bottom of this list, it’s pretty obvious—since he swears, “I always come back”—that he doesn’t feel bad for attempting to kill his daughter or for continuing to want to kill more children to trap in his animatronic monsters.10. Roderick Usher, The Fall of the House of Usher
This man sold his and his entire family’s souls to the devil for a fortune and a good life as long as he lived. The catch? He saw his entire bloodline die before him in horrific ways. Bruce Greenwood really brought gravitas to Roderick Usher, a man who could have just been played as a terrible father, and turned Poe’s tragic figure into a really sad picture of humanity’s hubris in the face of amassing power.
Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher beautifully and horrifically encapsulates paying for the sins of your father. Usher ranks as one of the worst because he really sold everyone. Even his granddaughter, who was an innocent, didn’t have a chance of escaping.9. Ellison Oswalt, Sinister
Ethan Hawke plays Ellison, a dad who decides to move into the house that’s the focus of the true crime murders he’s writing about, which really puts him up there as one of the worst horror fathers.
