Isabelle Adjani in “Possession” (1981)
A film as remarkable as Andrzej Zulawski‘s “Posseession” needed a remarkable performance to carry it, and it found one in Isabelle Adjani’s possibly career-best turn as Anna. How she carries her erratic and hysterically violent actions against her husband Mark (Sam Neill) and lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), or portrays the other woman in Mark’s life, Helen, as a polar opposite to Anna’s disturbing nature would have been enough for Adjani to be listed here. So roundly does she capture all the dimensions of her characters, spewing bitter jealousy around her crumbling marriage with intense conviction. But in that subway scene, Adjani transcends the screen and taps into our darkest fears, making her possession so blood-curdling and painfully realistic, it’s surely a contender for one of the most traumatizing moments in all of horror. Adjani deservedly won a Cesar and a Cannes Best Actress award for her outer-body performance, while the Academy probably got too scared to even dare nominate her.
Nicole Kidman in “The Others” (2001)
It’s hard to imagine that a Spanish director making his first English-language feature would be the one to get Nicole Kidman to star in her first bonafide horror film, but there you go. The key was surely Alejandro Amenabar’s fantastic screenplay and concept for “The Others,” a supernatural tale about a woman who starts to suspect a foreign threat in her home and does everything in her power to protect her children. Not merely relying on its (truly amazing) twist, the film has a lot going for it in the production department but it’s Kidman’s stoic, serious and increasingly-paranoid performance that’s top drawer. She was hitting a peak in her career, just after “Eyes Wide Shut” and with “Moulin Rouge!” released the same year, which illuminates the power of her portrayal all the more brightly. She floats about the screen in perfect posture and poise, registering horror conventions of screams and fears in her signature, theatrical, brilliant way.
Tim Robbins in “Jacob’s Ladder” (1991)
This was the first real dramatic turn for Tim Robbins, who was close to being typecast into balmy roles with films like “Bull Durham” and “The Sure Thing,” and it was such a powerfully understated (and underrated) performance that it made his career change course. Buried underneath Robbins’ portrait of Jacob Singer, the Vietnam vet who undergoes horrific traumas and living nightmares, is his everyman persona, flung from the frying pan into the fire, over and over. It’s grieving father, psychologically broken war veteran, dogged investigator and petrified lab rat all rolled into one brilliant performance, which seemingly grows a new layer with every passing year. And it accentuates the horror of “Jacob’s Ladder” all the more viscerally, as his tender flashes of joie de vivre get more suffocated by paranoia and terrifying hallucinations. To this day, it’s one of the greatest performance in horror never to be nominated for an award.
Song Kang-ho in “Thirst” (2009)
Park Chan-wook re-teamed with his “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” star Song Kang-ho for “Thirst,” and created one of the more intriguing vampire stories of recent times. Similar to nearly all the cases on this list, the film and all of its genre-bending tendencies, is carried by the lead performance; a very woeful and sympathetic Song. His Catholic priest turns into a reluctant vampire and must deal with his newfound thirst for blood while trying to bottle the love he feels for his best friend’s wife. It’s this bottling of emotions, whirling through pangs of love and jealousy, that make Song’s restrained portrayal such a gem in modern horror. As one of the most recognizable South Korean actors of his generation (besides “Vengeance,” Song also starred in “The Host” and “Snowpiercer“), his devilishly nuanced and brooding vampire is one that’s impossible to forget, balancing Park’s sensational knack for sensationalism with sombre and deeply felt charisma.
George C. Scott in “The Changeling” (1980)
When a freak accident kills his wife and daughter, composer/music professor John Russell moves into an old, creaky, creepy, mansion to continue on with his life. Scott’s gruff and domineering presence takes up most of the screen-time in Peter Medak’s “The Changeling,” and he handles the bereaved character with deft grace, shading him in psychological layers of grief and misguided compunction during the first half of the film. Watch life itself get sucked out of him whenever his daughter’s name is mentioned. Once the film becomes a harrowing supernatural horror, and the mysterious history of the house starts to unravel, Scott’s performance turns more fearless, not overacting a single beat and investing in the tragic story with the conviction of a man who knows what it means to suffer unbearable loss. Scott’s decades of experience are repressed into a ball of wrecked nerves here, bringing us ever closer to the emotional turmoils of this sordid and tragic tale.
As ever, this list could go on for a couple of more pages. Honorable mentions, from those who came closest to the cut to those that were dismissed more swiftly, include Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense,” Bela Lugosi in “Dracula,” Ellen Burstyn in “The Exorcist,” Max Schreck in “Nosferatu,” Michael Rooker in “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” Ashley Judd in “Bug,” Tony Todd in “Candyman,” Tim Curry in “It” (admittedly made for TV, but deserving nonentheless), Catherine Deneuve in “Repulsion,” Brad Pitt in “Se7en” and Christopher Lee in “The Wicker Man.”
Then there’s Harvey Stephens in “The Omen,” Byung-hun Lee in “I Saw the Devil,” Marcia Gay Harden in “The Mist,” Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in “Don’t Look Now,” Donald Pleasence in “Halloween,” Kurt Russell in “The Thing,” and Fredric March in “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.”
And there’s plenty more where those came from, but we’ll leave that up to you. You know where to leave your thoughts and outrage!
