The 10 Best Movie Villains Of The Year (So Far)

2016 is only halfway over, but already - in the space of just six months - we've been introduced to several memorable, all-time great characters. And chief among those are some of the most intoxicating bad guys Hollywood has produced in ages. They come from all over the map, genre-wise. From thrillers and comedies, horrors and new family classics, the antagonist has dominated the year so far in being consistently the most intriguing, most exciting character type. Some of them so good that we almost forget who we're supposed to be rooting for. So, without further ado, here are the ten best bad guys of 2016. Spoilers to follow..... 10) Kate Winslet - Triple 9 Triple 9 may be stocked with bad men, but it's the bad women who rule the roost. Gal Gadot's Elena holds all the cards when it comes to Chiwetel Ejiofor's bank robber Michael Atwood, forcing him to pull off increasingly dangerous heists in exchange for her granting him time with their son. Even more fearsome, though, is Elena's mob boss sister, Irina. Like many a John Hillcoat creation, Irina is a violent psychopath. Played by Kate Winslet with thick Russian accent and bouffant blonde hair do, Irina would look and sound almost comical if it weren't for her palpable contempt for humanity (she reserves particular scorn for Atwood, for the mere fact that he's black), slicing up friend and foe alike as long as she stands to make gains at the end. 'Ruthless' doesn't come close. 9) Walt Camby - Money Monster It's too easy these days to make villains out of bankers. Ever since the 2008 financial crash, the duplicitous Wall Street type has become one of Hollywood's bastards du jour, loathsomely populating movies like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street. It takes a fine actor to breathe life into a type of character that's fast becoming a cliche. Enter Dominic West. Since breaking out in The Wire some 15 years ago, Dominic West has become something of a go-to support act for whenever a filmmaker needs to class up a project. He's unseen for much of Jodie Foster's uneven Money Monster, but West's few scenes as financial crook Walt Camby are a powerful look at how banksters, so detached from real life, are as unrepentant about wrecking the lives of regular folk as they are. 8) Loner Leader - The Lobster There are few characters to truly like in oddball dark comedy The Lobster (such is the work of Yorgos Lanthimos), but Lea Seydoux's Loner Leader takes the cake. Ruling with an iron fist over her camp of relationship-less misfits, Loner Leader dishes out severe punishments to ensure her single comrades remain un-coupled. This extends past her vicious verbal barbs and paranoid glares to beatings and mutilation. We discover just how strong Loner Leader's belief is in her own cause when, under the auspices of an eye examination, she has Rachel Weisz' loved-up Short Sighted Woman blinded in retribution. This is a figure so horrific in her self-conviction that, when the Short Sighted Woman and Colin Farrell's David engineer a situation in which Loner Leader is eaten alive by a pack of dogs, our sympathy remains with them. Just. 7) Shere Khan - The Jungle Book Lent a full-throated malice by Idris Elba, Shere Khan is above all a terrific advert for animation houses Moving Picture Company and Weta Digital. A feat of digital engineering, this villain boasts a verisimilitude unlike any other character in The Jungle Book, or indeed any other all-CGI character this year. We believe it when we see Shere Khan attack our heroes, or when he callously murders his rivals. The character is at perhaps his most terrifying, though, when he's simply prowling, circling our heroes and eyeing them up as potential future meals. Shere Khan always carries with him a threat of violence, like he's ready to strike at any time, killing other beasts of the jungle simply to send the message that he's the top of the food chain. 6) Helmut Zemo - Captain America: Civil War Though superhero movies these days boast some of the best casts (those late-year Oscar contenders are going to have a difficult time topping Civil War's ensemble), these projects are rarely about character or hard-hitting emotions. Few superhero movie performances are truly much to write home about. Credit to Civil War's Daniel Bruhl, then, for making such fine lemonade out of the lemons of a typically under-developed MCU baddie. Like the unfortunately vast majority of Marvel movie villains, Helmut Zemo isn't particularly interesting on the page. Thanks to Bruhl, though, Zemo becomes a remarkably sympathetic do-badder, quietly driven and forever scheming in a way that we legitimately recognize. Zemo should be two-dimensional, but instead he's compelling in his zealous conviction and unshowy intellect. Hopefully we'll see him in the MCU again. 5) John Boy - The Nice Guys If you think there's something creepy about a grown man - an assassin, no less - calling himself John Boy, just wait til you meet him. The Nice Guys' chief villain doesn't show himself until over an hour into the movie, and when he first appears you might not even clock he's the bad guy at all. Though there's something off about this new character's unblinking stare, perma-smirk and perfectly neat hair... From the first time we see John Boy it's almost as though he's trying too hard to appear like a normal human being. The facade doesn't hide his true nature for long, as he quickly turns to hailing our heroes with bullets and casually executing innocent young women. Praise must go to Matt Bomer for making The Nice Guys' baddie so uncanny. In his hands, John Boy is a specter: outwardly human, but chillingly hollow on the inside. 4) Lance Armstrong - The Program Lance Armstrong doesn't realize he's the bad guy of The Program. Stephen Frears' bio gives us Armstrong at his most ruthless and obnoxious, publicly repeatedly lying to his legions of fans while secretly threatening fellow cyclists who seek to reveal his illegal doping practices. Armstrong, though, evidently doesn't see his behavior as 'bad,' just necessary to ensure he retains the sporting crown he considers his. A charming, smarmy Ben Foster nails this interpretation of Armstrong by Frears and screenwriter John Hodge. The rest of their film is never much cop, but their villain is perfect: a forever distant figure and possible pathological liar whose self-belief is so strong he never understands he's done anything wrong. Together, Frears, Hodge and Foster turn one of sport's fallen idols into an everyday sociopath. 3) Howard - 10 Cloverfield Lane 10 Cloverfield Lane's Howard - big frame, heavy breathing, hateful stare - isn't someone you'd ever want to get into a car with on a dark night. The only way you'd do that is if he'd purposely crashed into you and taken you as his prisoner. Howard (John Goodman, in a tour-de-force turn) probably tells himself he took Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Michelle and locked her in his bunker for honorable reasons. There is an alien invasion going on outside, after all. Really, to Howard the attack was just an opportunity to claim himself an unwilling new wife. Throughout the course of the film we come to learn Howard has already kidnapped one woman before, ultimately dissolved in a vat of acid when she displeased him. A truly pathetic monster, we don't mind much when Michelle eventually comes to escape Howard's clutches, melting him with his own tub of chemicals and blowing him to pieces inside his own bunker. 2) Darcy Banker - Green Room There arguably isn't enough Patrick Stewart in Green Room. Jeremy Saulnier's Carpenter-inspired punk-thriller deploys Stewart's neo-Nazi kingpin Darcy Bunker in choice moments: a siege, an execution, the staging of a murder scene. Maybe Saulnier was just sparing us; maybe he realized we wouldn't have been able to stomach much more time spent in this man's company. Stewart is just that complete in his wretchedness. Unlike the jackbooted thugs he surrounds himself with, Darcy seems calm, collected and intelligent. He speaks like a gentleman. But Stewart never lets us forget that this man is shatteringly evil, with his demonic smirk, venomously smooth speech and general air of repulsion towards his fellow man. A terrifying creation, a fine performance, and the best human villain of the year. 1) Black Phillip - The Witch There are many characters working antagonistically in Robert Eggers' New England period horror, The Witch. From the start, we see there is a demonic crone living in the woods, toying with the puritan family who've just decamped next door, but before long the clan takes to destroying itself from the inside, with father and mother lashing out at children they fear may have become possessed by the devil. In the end - of course - it turns out it's actually a ram named Black Phillip who's been pulling the strings all along. Throughout The Witch, family goat Black Phillip - in fact the embodiment of Satan himself - just sits idly by, biding his time as he watches his erstwhile owners tear themselves apart. No villain this year has been quite so surprising, original and downright iconic, while none have been as patient and subtle in their meddling as this killer goat.