The Best Horror Movie Performances Of The Decade [2010s]

Often regarded as “less than” when it comes to cinema, the horror genre isn’t just a place to find scares and thrills. Buried under buckets of blood, scary masks, and supernatural mishaps are some truly great performances. And no, not just “good enough for a horror film” performances. We’re talking some of the best actors in the business turning in some of the best work of their career.

You want to tell Toni Collette that her already-iconic performance in “Hereditary” isn’t up there with what Olivia Colman did in last year’s “The Favourite?” It’s just that Colman earned an Oscar and Collette was robbed of even a nomination. But let’s not digress.

The truth is that horror films get a bad reputation for having terrible performances that are overshadowed by shocks and jumpscares. However, over the last decade, there were plenty of actors that treated their horror roles with the utmost respect. And in doing so, not only did these performers give fans memorable characters and classic horror scenes, but also some of the very best work you’ll see in any film, regardless of genre.

So, as we close out another decade of film, let’s take a look back at some of the very best horror performances of the 2010s.

Toni Collette, “Hereditary”
There is a reason that A24 sells enamel pins of Toni Collette’s anguished face on their online store. She is “Hereditary.” As a suburban Utah mom (and miniature artist), she starts out the movie as someone who generally has their life together, but as the movie slowly unravels, she’s faced with the most messed-up family lineage you can imagine, which leads her to saw off her own head. Truly it’s up to Collette to build a concrete emotional throughline so that all the screaming and crying and fountaining blood actually means something; without her character’s innate believability the entire movie would fall apart, collapsing under the weight of its own outrageousness. Collette gives the character a dignity, too, that would probably have been missing had someone else been cast in the role. There have been so many “women go insane” movies made that give little attention to the woman’s actual struggle, but here we can watch, as she thoughtfully grapples with everything that is happening to her and her family, otherworldly or very real. We’ve got our pin on.

Jamie Lee Curtis, “Halloween”
It was a dicey proposition: bring “Halloween” back for a new generation but do so as a direct sequel, ignoring all of the movies that came after the original film. But the production, led by director David Gordon Green, scored a big coup by getting Jamie Lee Curtis to return to the role that made her a superstar while allowing her to play a very different version of Laurie Strode. Curtis’ Laurie is now a backwoods survivalist, who has spent the past four decades ignoring her family (including her daughter, played wonderfully by Judy Greer) and preparing for the return of serial killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney). What makes this new “Halloween” so compelling largely hinges on her performance; as she warms up and breaks down the walls that she’s worked so hard to install around herself, she is also forced to deal with the trauma that turned her into that person in the first place. It’s some complex psychological maneuvering to play against a backdrop of an escaped psychopath smashing people’s faces in, but it totally works. You can feel Curtis’ excitement to return to the character and her liberation to be free of all the baggage the sequels accumulated (including a few that she was in!).

Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”/“Annihilation”
While mostly known for her prestige output, Portman occasionally dips into stranger waters, as is the case with Darren Aronofsky‘s psychological horror film “Black Swan” and Alex Garland‘s under-seen masterpiece “Annihilation.” For “Black Swan,” Portman plays a young ballerina whose grip on reality is tenuous at best. When she starts pushing herself further and further, that grip becomes even looser. It’s a brilliant, ballsy performance that was rewarded with a Best Actress Academy Award (and rightfully so); you can practically feel the anguish she’s going through, her body stretching and aching with every move. She would follow up that performance with last year’s “Annihilation,” where she plays a scientist who enters an otherworldly bubble to uncover what happened to her husband, who just returned from the void and who seems … different. She’s a woman driven by scientific discovery as much as she is emotional curiosity, and the deeper metaphor of the movie being about self-destruction takes on a psychedelic dimension in the movie’s closing moments. (Again, Portman’s unmatched physicality conveys more than words ever could.) These two performances are proof that, while Portman might not choose genre fare very often but when she does, they are best in class.

Antonio Banderas, “The Skin I Live In”
One of Pedro Almodovar‘s very best (and most underrated) masterworks, “The Skin I Live In” is also the closest the director has ever come to making a straight-up horror movie. (And, yes, we know he produced Guillermo del Toro‘s ghostly “The Devil’s Backbone.”) Antonio Banderas plays a plastic surgeon who essentially becomes a mad scientist (this is a role that, with some finessing, Vincent Price could have probably played) and, as the movie progresses, slowly reveals things about who he is (and why he is the way he is) while also telling the story of Vera (Elena Anaya), a young woman who he keeps in his house who you first assume is his mistress but then … not so much. “The Skin I Live In” feels so painfully under-seen that saying more would risk spoiling a movie that few have actually watched, but Banderas, in what is arguably one of his finest performances, manages to bring depth and pathos to a character who could have been totally one-dimensional and, in the worst of hands, some kind of mustache-twirling creep.

Tilda Swinton, “Suspiria”
“Suspiria,” Luca Guadagnino’s outrageous remake of Dario Argento’s beloved classic, was already a should-they-even-attempt-that high wire act before he decided to cast Tilda Swinton in three separate, wholly different roles. But it speaks to both the filmmaker’s instinct and Swinton’s unbelievable ability, that it all came together in the end. The biggest, and showiest, Swinton role in the new film is of Madame Blanc, a witch and ballet instructor who is trying to assert her power over the coven and the company, when a rebellious American girl (Dakota Johnson) shows up and threatens it all. Feminine and graceful, she still manages to be menacing and very creepy, a boho Berlin intellectual harboring many dark secrets. Elsewhere, she plays Dr. Josef Klemperer (a role credited to the fictitious Lutz Ebersdorf), a Nazi survivor who starts investigating the ballet school at the behest of a terrified student. This doesn’t totally work (you can still tell it’s her, even under gobs of make-up), but Swinton gives the character an emotional richness that resonates, and the fact that she’s playing the character speaks to the movie’s inherent femaleness. And, lastly, she plays an old ghoul named Mother Helena Markos, virtually unrecognizable and totally repellent. There’s a lot of talk about the “three mothers” in “Suspiria;” it turns out they’re all Swinton.

Lupita Nyong’o, “Us”
One of the biggest and most impressive feats of “Us,” Jordan Peele’s big and impressive follow-up to “Get Out,” is his ability to cast actors who can play both a seemingly normal version of themselves and a crazed doppelganger (The Tethered, in the film’s terminology). All of the actors, big and small, pull this off terrifically (we love Tim Heidecker, his hair slicked back, offering a hand to an injured costar and coolly retracting the offer), but it’s Lupita Nyong’o, as suburban mother Adelaide and her psychotic Tethered Red, whose performance feels almost superhuman. Adelaide has been traumatized by a past run-in with her Tethered, and is fearful, even before the doubles show up, willing to do anything to protect her family. Red, on the other hand, with her raspy voice and golden scissors, is a ringleader of the revolution, The Untethering, borrowing iconography from the Hands Across America fund-raising stunt of the 1980s and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” As the movie progresses and the layers are revealed, Nyong’o’s performance becomes even more impressive, and the balancing act between the two performances (and characters) seems even more amazing.