Back in 2020, I threw together one of my very first big lists when I set out to rank the greatest female horror characters. I was pretty green at list-making back then, but after stumbling across it again recently, I figured it was prime time for an update. A ton of killer new entries have come along since then, while I also updated my catalog with some previously unseen classics.
This time around, I approached it fresh, like the original list didn’t even exist. I brainstormed and ranked every character I felt deserved a spot, without peeking at the old version. I wanted to see what ranking would happen naturally: Which newer ones would force their way in? How would the old favorites reshuffle in the rankings? Would any get the axe entirely?
Once I had my new list locked in, I finally compared the two side by side… and there were some real shake-ups. I ended up adding 18 new entries, which meant cutting 18 to make room, and a few of those cuts hurt.
For each entry now, you’ll see a “Previously Ranked” note at the bottom showing exactly what happened. Did it climb, drop, stay put, or get dropped altogether? Tracking the biggest risers, fallers, and cuts was honestly a blast.
Hope y’all enjoy this refreshed take on the baddest, most iconic women in horror! Drop your own thoughts in the comments!
80. Megan (Jennifer Cooke) | Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Most of the ladies in the Friday the 13th series spend their time running around screaming, hiding in closets, or waiting for some big, strong guy to save them. Not this little spitfire. Megan Garris is out hunting for a bad boy and a good time…a showdown with Jason Voorhees. Get your mind out of the gutters. She’s no typical final girl; she’s made some seriously questionable calls (sneaking around, lying to her sheriff dad, breaking the “bad guy” out of jail), but she’s got a solid heart and zero fear when it counts.
Jennifer Cooke delivers one of the franchise’s best characters in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986). Megan stands up to her own father, floors the gas in her sweet 1975 Chevrolet Camaro, takes on Jason with a boat motor like he owes her money, and still saves the kids at the camp. All while cracking wise and having a blast. She’s feisty, reckless in the best way, fearless, and just plain fun. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her; while everyone else panics, Megan’s fighting, driving, and flirting with danger like it’s a normal Friday night.
Previous Ranking: #56
79. Jennifer (Megan Fox) | Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Teenage girls can be scary enough with their tweetgrams and snapfaces, but nothing tops a wild-child teen who gets taken over by a demon and turns into a full-on man-eating succubus. Jennifer Check starts as the ultimate high-school queen, gorgeous, popular, cheerleader-perfect, with a mean streak that loves making her insecure best friend Needy feel small. After a botched satanic sacrifice by an indie rock band (they thought she was a virgin; plot twist, she wasn’t), she gets possessed and develops an insatiable craving for boys’ flesh and souls to stay hot and alive. What follows is a bloody rampage of seduction, gore, and dark comedy as she lures in classmates, tears them apart, and keeps that killer smile.
In Megan Fox’s best performance to date, she plays Jennifer fiendishly well, having a blast as the sexy, demonic prom-queen succubus. She nails the mix of bubbly teen cruelty, sultry temptation, and horrifying glee, throwing out lines like “I’m eating your boyfriend” while vomiting black goo or regenerating from wounds like it’s no big deal. Fox leans into the character’s vanity, insecurity, and predatory vibe, turning what could be a one-note villain into a campy, iconic force.
Previous Ranking: #85
78. Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) | The Witch (2015)
The Witch is a slow-burn Puritan nightmare about a devout family cast out of their New England colony in the 1630s, convinced witchcraft lurks in the woods, and maybe even in their own blood. After being banished, they try to make it on their own, only for all of a sudden their crops to fail, their baby to vanish, and the goat to act possessed; the paranoia begins to fester like rot. At the heart of it all is the eldest daughter, Thomasin. The one everyone starts eyeing with suspicion as a “witch” in their midst. She’s a teenage girl caught between obedience and awakening desires, blamed for every misfortune while the real evil creeps closer.
Anya Taylor-Joy delivers a breakout performance in her first major role, bringing Thomasin layers of innocence, quiet curiosity, creeping dread, and subtle defiance that make the whole tale feel achingly real. She starts as the dutiful, wide-eyed daughter milking goats and minding siblings, but as accusations fly and her family unravels, that innocence cracks. It reveals something wilder, hungrier, and eerily self-possessed underneath. Taylor-Joy nails the slow shift from victim to something almost otherworldly, her huge eyes conveying terror one moment and unsettling calm the next. Anya does such a fantastic job that you are almost rooting for Thomasin to let the evil take over.
Previous Ranking: #73
77. Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) | The Descent (2005)
Before The Descent plunges its group of thrill-seeking women into the pitch-black hell of an uncharted cave system, Sarah Carter is already a certified badass just trying to keep breathing. A year earlier, she lost her husband and young daughter in a devastating car accident. She blames herself, drowning in grief, barely holding it together. Her friends drag her on this spelunking trip to “get her back out there,” but Sarah’s not some fragile widow needing coddling. She’s tough, quiet, fiercely determined, and ready to face whatever the dark throws at her, even if the real monsters aren’t just the ones with teeth. (You know who I’m talking about. She will show up on this list later.)
Shauna Macdonald delivers Sarah with raw, gut-punching intensity, turning her from a grieving shell into an unstoppable force of survival. Trapped in the cave, she uncovers heart-wrenching betrayals (that one gut-punch revelation about her husband hits like a sledgehammer), watches her friends get torn apart by monsters, and still keeps fighting. Sarah doesn’t just endure; she taps into a primal strength she didn’t even know she had, becoming the last woman standing in one of the most brutal, claustrophobic horrors ever made.
Previous Ranking: #76
76. Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) | The Conjuring Universe
The Conjuring stormed the horror world not just with its masterful scares and suffocating atmosphere, but with a central heroine who refused to be sidelined by the darkness she faced. While most ghost stories put the terrified family front and center, this one spotlights Lorraine Warren, a real-life paranormal investigator and clairvoyant demonologist, as one of the franchise’s true heroes. Paired with her devoted husband Ed, she dives headfirst into demonic hauntings, possessions, and unholy forces, using her psychic visions, deep faith, and unshakeable resolve to protect the innocent and banish evil.
Vera Farmiga brings a perfect blend of quiet strength, vulnerability, spiritual earnestness, and selflessness that makes her endlessly endearing to fans. She starts as this poised, empathetic medium who sees too much, reliving traumatic visions, battling doubt from skeptics, and protecting her own family from the backlash. Farmiga nails the emotional depth, turning Lorraine from a supporting investigator into the emotional and moral heart of the series.
Previous Ranking: #54
75. Angela (Manuela Velasco) | REC (Franchise)
The genius bit of casting for [REC] is that Manuela Velasco was actually a TV personality in Spain. Although it may not have had the same effect on me, it likely added a layer of verisimilitude when it was released in Spain. Even without that cultural knowledge, Velasco is very believable in her role and the ‘behind-the-scenes’ sequences – as she and her cameraman look for interesting shots and worry about which side to stand on in interviews – really give the proceedings that frisson of realism you hope for in a found footage film. (That they shot these opening scenes in an actual, working fire station helps as well.)
As the film progresses and things go from bad to worse to zombie apocalypse, Angela sells us on the fear, uncertainty, and her dedication to preserving a record of what’s going on. I love Jennifer Carpenter in the US remake, Quarantine, but Manuela Velasco is just as good in the role. I found myself holding my breath whenever she did, hoping whatever we were half-seeing in the night-vision gloom would pass her by.
Subsequent films (Angela appears in [REC] 2 and 4) show Angela progressing from frightened professional to something of a zombie-killing badass. It’s always fun to see this character, so I even liked 4, just because she was in it. Really, though, you can watch the first two films without ever needing to see the others. She’s fantastic in both.
—Bob Cram
Previous Ranking: New Entry
74. Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) | Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)
Horror fan or not, pretty much everyone knows about Elvira in some capacity. In the early 80s, actress Cassandra Peterson would create the character to host a new horror TV series. Inspired by The Vampira Show, Peterson, as Elvira, would host Elvira’s Movie Macabre, a very popular show for horror fans at the time. Elvira’s campy humor and sex appeal would resonate with horror fans so much that her show would spawn a feature film.
Peterson made Elvira all her own in how she walks, talks, and flirts. She grabs every scene by the throat. People absolutely loved both her sexy gothic/punk-inspired fashion and twisted sense of humor. She is gorgeous, voluptuous, sarcastic, and funny, with a dark heart.
Previous Ranking: #28
73. Selena (Naomie Harris) | 28 Days Later (2002)
Every few years, the zombie genre gets a shot of fresh air, and 28 Days Later delivered it big time. Ditching shambling corpses for fast, rage-fueled infected that turned the apocalypse into a sprint. Right in the thick of it is Selena, a former chemist turned hardened survivor who’s already deep in survival mode when we meet her on Day 28. She’s fierce, compassionate when it counts, and utterly merciless if infection hits. No hesitation, no second chances. Friend, family, or foe, if you turn, she’s swinging that trusty machete without a blink.
Naomie Harris brings a raw badass energy that makes her one of the ultimate horror heroines. She starts cold and pragmatic, ready to abandon or kill to survive, but slowly cracks open with Jim, Frank, and Hannah, finding flickers of hope and laughter. Harris nails the evolution from a no-nonsense warrior who won’t let emotion slow her down to someone who rediscovers humanity amid the chaos.
Previous Ranking: #71
72. Rose (Allison Williams) | Get Out (2017)
Rose Armitage starts off as a sweet and innocent girlfriend who is supportive of her man and fights against injustice. That is, until she “can’t find the damn keys” and turns into a stone-cold sociopath in a split second! I mean, eating one piece of dry cereal at a time while sipping milk through a straw isn’t normal, right? We learn that this cool and diverse chick persona is all a facade to lure black men (and at least one woman) to be imprisoned and body-snatched for the benefit of older, rich, white clients. Allison Williams played the first part so well that her turn was still a shock, whether you saw it coming or not.
Previous Ranking: #55
71. Kay (Julie Adams) | Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Back in 1954, when most horror heroines were screaming damsels waiting for the big, strong men to save them from the monster, along came Kay Lawrence. Smart, independent, and perfectly capable of holding her own among the all-male expedition crew. She’s not just eye candy tagging along. She’s a scientist with vision, confidence, and a sharp point of view, diving into the Amazon adventure to uncover evidence of an amphibious humanoid fossil. Julie Adams brings Kay to life with vibrant energy, beauty, and a strong-willed personality that makes her feel ahead of her time.
That iconic underwater scene where Kay glides through the lagoon in her white one-piece bathing suit, unaware that the Gill-Man is mirroring her every move just beneath her, is etched forever in horror history. It’s a haunting and beautiful image that still captivates audiences over 70 years later. Adams nails the role so perfectly that Kay stands as one of the earliest true female icons of monster movies.
Previous Ranking: #49
70. Anna (Morjana Alaoui) | Martyrs (2008)
Martyrs is one of the most brutal nightmares ever captured on film. There is an unrelenting nastiness that marked it as one of the best and well-known of the French Extreme movement back in the 00s. At the heart of it is one of the saddest and most tragic victims in horror history. Anna was just trying to be a good friend, standing by Lucie through years of shared trauma in an orphanage. She tried helping hunt down the people who tortured Lucie as a child. only to get dragged into a far deeper hell when a secret society kidnaps her for their twisted quest to force “transcendence” and a glimpse of the afterlife through extreme suffering. What starts as a revenge story flips into something much darker, where Anna endures unimaginable, methodical torture.
Morjana Alaoui is devastating as Anna, bringing an almost saint-like vulnerability that makes every second of her ordeal hit like a gut punch. She begins as this gentle, empathetic soul. She’s protective, self-sacrificing, whispering comfort in the worst moments, but as the pain escalates, she taps into an unbreakable inner strength. She refuses to shatter where others did. Anna doesn’t just survive the horror; she transcends being a typical final girl.
Previous Ranking: New Entry
69. Laura (Sally Hawkins) | Bring Her Back (2025)
Most foster moms are meant to be safe refuges for grieving kids, and at first, Laura feels like the perfect person to watch over some displaced children. But what we learn is that she is a walking wound masquerading as comfort. After step-siblings Andy and visually impaired Piper lose their father in a freak accident and land in her isolated Australian home. Laura starts off seeming eccentric yet kind, a former counselor still shattered by the drowning of her blind daughter, Cathy, years ago in the backyard pool. She showers Piper with creepy favoritism, claims her mute foster boy Oliver stopped speaking after the tragedy, and offers affection that feels too clingy and desperate. As the dread mounts and strange rituals begin to happen, her grief reveals itself as something monstrous.
Sally Hawkins gives a devastating performance as she shifts from almost pitiable warmth to unhinged maternal obsession with heartbreaking precision. Her soft voice turns commanding, loving touches become possessive, raw anguish explodes when the ritual fails, and her world crumbles. Laura isn’t some cartoon villain. She’s a genuinely broken mother whose willingness to destroy others to fill her void makes her terrifyingly real and profoundly horrifying. Hawkins nails every fracture, making it impossible not to be gripped and haunted by her grief.
Previous Ranking: New Entry
68. Alexia/Adrien (Agathe Rousselle) | Titane (2021)
Titane is one of those films—like Field of Dreams, Sophie’s Choice, or The Sixth Sense—where the conversation begins and ends with the “moment.” The scene. The thing everyone knows. But just like those movies, it is so much bigger than its shock value, its twist, or its most infamous image. Because if all you know about Titane is that a woman fucks a car, you have no idea what’s in store. The film centers on one of the most unique and unforgettable protagonists of the last decade. Alexia, played by Agathe Rousselle, is like a feral angel with motor oil in her veins. She is introduced as a child who survives a car crash that kills her mother and leaves her with a titanium plate in her skull—a cold, unfeeling piece of metal embedded into a warm, fragile human body.
It’s a literal wound that becomes symbolic from the very first frame. This is not just trauma. This is transformation. She grows up not with the car, but for it. Dancing for it. Touching it. Fusing with it. And yes, eventually having sex with it. This is the point where most movies would either flinch or wink. Titane does neither. It commits with terrifying sincerity. Alexia becomes a go-go dancer at motor shows, radiating a feral sexuality that feels both aggressive and mechanical. Men leer. Men touch. Men assume they own her. And Alexia kills them. Not with rage. Not with flair. With the numbness of someone who has never felt at home in her body, her world, or her assigned role within it. She is a woman who does not want to be touched—unless she controls the terms. She is desired, but does not desire back. Her violence feels less like vengeance and more like a refusal to be defined. And then the movie doubles down on craziness. Alexia becomes pregnant—by the car. Oil leaks from her body. Her stomach swells unnaturally. Her skin cracks. The metal inside her is rejecting the flesh around it, or maybe the flesh is rejecting what it was told to be.
You would think this would be enough plot for one movie, but then the movie shifts gears again (pun intended) and becomes something else entirely. It slows down and ditches the shock for sincerity. It eventually reveals itself to be a trans allegory that turns into a beautiful, albeit it completely unexpected, story about acceptance. Titane asks you to accept the unacceptable: a woman who loves a car, a man who loves a child who is not his, a body that refuses to stay within the rules of nature, gender, or narrative logic. It is grotesque and deeply human at the same time. And at the center of it all is Alexia, one of the most complex horror characters the genre has ever produced.
–Sailor Monsoon
Previous Ranking: New Entry
67. Mia (Jane Levy) | Evil Dead (2013)
In Fede Álvarez’s brutal remake of The Evil Dead, Mia Allen starts as the textbook hopeless case. A strung-out drug addict whose friends drag her to a remote cabin for a forced detox, hoping to save her from herself before she spirals completely. She’s shaky, sarcastic, vulnerable, and barely holding it together. But when the Deadites crash the party, possessing bodies and turning the cabin into a blood-soaked slaughterhouse, Mia doesn’t just break; she transforms.
Jane Levy is phenomenal as Mia, shifting from trembling fragility to feral, unhinged rage as the demon tries to claim her; she gets injected, drowned, buried alive, and still claws her way back, finding an inner strength no one saw coming. By the finale, she’s a chainsaw-wielding, one-armed badass, ripping off her own possessed limb with raw determination, standing alone against the demon, and delivering the killing blow that saves the world from an apocalyptic evil. Character arcs don’t get much more satisfying than this. From helpless addict to the lone survivor who literally cuts her way to redemption, proving that sometimes the strongest heroes are forged in the worst kind of hell.
Previous Ranking: #68
66. Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) | Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Anyone well versed in the history of old Hollywood knows that few people hated each other more than Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Their animosity towards one another is legendary, so putting them in a movie together is like putting two feral cats in a small cage and shaking it. The tension between the two of them adds another layer of intensity to their on-screen rivalry. It feels like Davis was really torturing Crawford in every scene because she probably was. Two aging former child stars are forced to live together in a mansion in old Hollywood. The two of them are sisters who hate each other for different reasons.
Blanche (Joan Crawford) is wheelchair-bound and plots to get even with Jane for the car crash that left her crippled years earlier, and Jane is a deeply troubled and delusional loon stuck in the past who’s obsessed with fame and wants her sister out of the way so that she can be a star again. Once a famous vaudeville child star, Jane is now living in obscurity, consumed by jealousy of her sister, who later became a more successful actress. Despite her aging appearance, she wears heavy makeup, reminiscent of her days as a child star, and clings to her former identity, singing her old song “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” in a disturbing, grotesque manner.
This refusal to face reality creates an eerie contrast between her appearance and her delusions. Davis’s performance helped pioneer the “psycho-biddy” subgenre, where aging actresses portrayed disturbed older women. A genre that is still going strong today, but has yet to produce a film half as great as this. Because there are no actresses alive who can hold a candle to Davis, she’s the best that’s ever lived, and this might be her crowning achievement.
-Sailor Monsoon
Previous Ranking: New Entry
65. Zelda (Andrew Hubatsek) | Pet Sematary (1989)
If you watched the original Pet Sematary, especially as a kid, you remember Zelda. Vividly. She was easily the creepiest thing from that movie that left a spine-tingling impression on all viewers. Relegated mostly to flashbacks, Zelda was the Goldstein family’s dirty little secret. Older sister to then 8-year-old Rachel, Zelda suffered from spinal meningitis, a disease that caused Zelda’s spine to painfully deform as she wasted away in the back bedroom, physically and mentally.
The practical effects used only amplified her creepiness, and here is the kicker: she was played by a man. Andrew Hubatsek’s voice and physicality helped make Zelda into pure nightmare fuel.
Previous Ranking: #60
64. Stretch (Caroline Williams) | The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 (1986)
Stretch (that nickname has to be because of them legs, right?) is a local DJ at a rock station in a small Texas town during the gonzo chaos of Tobe Hooper’s follow-up sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Most people would fold the second Leatherface fires up that chainsaw, but not this badass chick. As she spins tunes and trades barbs from her booth with effortless cool, we instantly fall in love with her as she takes the maniacal Sawyer family head-on.
Caroline Williams is electric as Stretch, blending rock-chick sass, sharp wit, and raw survival grit. She takes beatings, gets tortured in a skinned-face dress-up, watches allies die horribly, but won’t relent. She charms Leatherface for a heartbeat, then grabs a chainsaw from Grandma’s shrine in the explosive finale to fight back and walk (or limp) away as one of the rare few to survive the entire cannibal clan. It’s impossible not to love her: funny, fierce, unflinching, and forever the DJ who out-rocked the Sawyers in one of horror’s wildest sequels.
Previous Ranking: #46
63. Christiane (Edith Scob) | Eyes Without a Face (1960)
The title alone sets an uncomfortable tone in this early French horror film about a surgeon trying to repair his daughter’s disfigured face after a horrible accident. Imagining a set of eyes that don’t have a face is creepy enough, and then we meet those eyes. We don’t get to spend too much time with Christiane before her accident. Therefore, we don’t know if she was always this deranged, or if the accident fractured something, or was it simply her dad’s doing by performing these heinous surgeries.
Christiane’s unsettling look and murderous ways would be one of the most memorable female figures of early horror, even influencing one of the greatest male villains of all time. John Carpenter once said that Christiane’s blank face was an inspiration for Michael Myers’ famous mask.
Previous Ranking: #63
62. Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) | Saw (Franchise)
We all know Jigsaw’s twisted gospel from the Saw franchise: snatch people wasting their lives, trap them in brutal survival games, and if they pass, they’re supposed to wake up cherishing every breath. However, Amanda Young fully buys into this gospel and then some. She’s a junkie who becomes the first confirmed survivor of Jigsaw’s twisted games, clawing her way out of the Reverse Bear Trap in the original Saw by carving open a sedated man’s stomach for the key, emerging bloody and reborn. That “miracle” hooks her deep; John sees a disciple, she sees a father figure to replace her abusive past and heroin haze.
Shawnee Smith is masterful, shifting Amanda effortlessly from sympathetic, shattered victim to chilling accomplice. She poses as a trapped player in Saw II, rigging unwinnable traps in Saw III out of jealousy and broken loyalty, proving she’s not just following Jigsaw’s philosophy but corrupting it with her own rage and desperation for approval. By the end, her betrayal shatters everything, and she pays the price in one of horror’s most tragic, layered arcs. Amanda isn’t merely a follower; she’s the heartbreaking proof that even those Jigsaw “saves” can become his most heinous monsters, loyal to the death and impossible to forget.
Previous Ranking: #59
61. Casey (Drew Barrymore) | Scream (1996)
While Neve Campbell became the enduring final girl of the Scream franchise, back in 1996, it was Drew Barrymore’s star power that packed theaters for Wes Craven’s fresh, meta slasher revival. Her ten-minute opening as Casey Becker remains one of horror’s most shocking, iconic sequences. She starts as the sweet, personable high-school girl next door, blonde hair, cozy white sweater, bowl of popcorn in hand, answering the phone with warm, flirty charm that makes you instantly root for her to survive, outsmart Ghostface, and fight through to the bloody climax like the greatest final girls of all time. Everyone’s thinking this is our new Laurie Strode… until the questions turn deadly, the rules get laid out, and in a brutal gut-punch twist, Casey gets stabbed, gutted, and left hanging from the tree for her parents to find.
Drew Barrymore sells every frantic, heartbreaking beat with wide-eyed panic and a fading sweet smile In her short, yet savage screen time, Casey shatters expectations, announces no one is safe (not even the biggest star), and etches herself forever into horror history as the blonde-haired victim we all lost too soon, making Scream feel dangerous, unpredictable, and unforgettable from the very first ring.
Previous Ranking: #61
100-81 | 60-41
What do you think of the selection so far? Who are some of your favorite female horror characters? Perhaps they will appear later on the list.
