Horror movies have long centered their stories around female characters—think The Exorcist‘s demon-plagued mother and daughter duo, Halloween‘s fierce babysitter, or Black Christmas‘ determined sorority sisters. But in 2024 we got a particularly notable crop of women placed in terrifying situations, including a new sci-fi badass in Alien: Romulus, a kind-hearted crook battling a vampire ballerina in Abigail, and trapped Mormon missionaries in Heretic.
But there were a few special standouts among this year’s class of fearsome, fearless, and fearful females—performances we admired that brought to life a unique array of characters. Here are the most remarkable female characters we met in 2024’s horror films.
Lee Harker, Longlegs
We think we have a handle on young FBI agent Lee Harker from the start: quiet but brilliant in the vein of The Silence of the Lambs‘ Clarice Starling, but with an unusually developed intuition that makes her well-suited to chase after unpredictable criminals. However, as Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs digs into its twisty crime narrative, we realize Lee is in her own vein entirely—and is tied to the movie’s titular maniac in ways that surprise even her. Maika Monroe’s deeply reserved performance (the ideal contrast to co-star Nicolas Cage’s over-the-top turn) proves that an actor doesn’t need a lot of dialogue to create a full, expressive character.
Elisabeth Sparkle and Sue, The Substance
Demi Moore has been a symbol of Hollywood glamor for decades; at age 62, she perfectly channels that real-life status into her vanity-free portrayal of Elisabeth Sparkle in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, a movie that happens to have vanity as a major theme. Fired from her TV gig because the old white dudes in charge think she’s too old to be sexy, Elisabeth dips into weird science to create a younger version of herself—Margaret Qualley as “Sue”—with complications that result in some of the most eye-popping body horror to ever grace the screen.
Because Elisabeth and Sue are the same person, the battle between them puts a gruesome but darkly hilarious spin on the idea that your greatest enemy is always yourself. When they come together as the mutated “Monstro Elisasue,” it’s equal parts repulsive and empowering—not a combination you come across every day, and a surprisingly satisfying one.
Skye Riley, Smile 2
She’s an international pop superstar—beautiful, talented, rich, and beloved by her zillions of fans—but Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is in hell. First it’s more of a personal hell; a year after a car accident killed her boyfriend and left her severely injured, she’s still dealing with addiction issues and mental and physical scars. But after an impulse decision to pick up some black-market painkillers, she comes face to face with the demonic curse horror fans met in Parker Finn’s first Smile movie.
From there, Skye’s downward spiral reveals a much worse level of hell, as her reality becomes completely warped by the entity’s creeping, mockingly gleeful invasion of her sanity. On paper Skye is a hard character to root for, but Scott’s performance makes her a character who’s believable in her desire to right all the wrongs she’s caused—but feels increasingly helpless as the pressure (both show-biz and supernatural) begins to pile on.
Margaret, The First Omen
Somebody had to give birth to Damien, the kid from The Omen—and while that 1976 horror classic suggested he was the product of a jackal and Satan, in The First Omen we meet his actual birth mother, an aspiring nun who gets unwittingly tangled in an occult conspiracy. Arkasha Stevenson’s prequel justifies its existence by being an artistically dynamic film with a twist-packed script (and actual scares!); the heart of the film, though, is Nell Tiger Free’s Margaret, a genuinely good human being whose life takes an apocalyptically dark turn.
Honorable mention in the “Antichrist horror pregnancy” realm for 2024—though given current events, you can certainly expect more pregnancy horror themes in future movies—goes to another performance in a different horror prequel. Natalie Erika James’ Rosemary’s Baby-inspired Apartment 7A didn’t get as much acclaim as The First Omen, but Julia Garner held its center as Terry, a character you briefly meet in Rosemary’s Baby who has a fascinating backstory of her own.
Maxine Minx, MaXXXine
She survived the Texas porn-set massacre in 2022’s X, and with the ambition of her would-be killer, Pearl (whose vintage dreams of stardom are explored, quite vividly, in 2022’s Pearl), Maxine Minx finally stomps her way into Hollywood. As we find her in MaXXXine, she’s seeking mainstream success beyond her X-rated fame—and nothing, not even a serial killer who might be the Night Stalker, a creepy private detective, actual LAPD detectives, and an ominous specter from her blood-stained past, is going to get in the way.
Mia Goth, who plays both Pearl and Maxine across Ti West’s trilogy, brings us a more mature yet still ruthless take on Maxine here, and the character’s mid-1980s silver-screen journey brings her to famous backlots (Maxine in the Psycho house is one of 2024’s most unforgettable cinematic mash-ups) and sleazy back rooms, and explores the price of fame from a lurid perspective that’s never not entertaining.
Halley, V/H/S/Beyond
Kate Siegel’s contribution to the latest V/H/S anthology film, “Stowaway,” introduces us to Halley (Alanah Pearce), a woman whose troubled backstory is made perfectly clear with just a few asides, and whose current ambition is to make a documentary on UFOs—preferably by having her own close encounter. When her moment miraculously arrives one lonely night in the Mojave Desert, we’re thrilled for her—she’s been through some messy stuff, it’s implied, but her weird obsession has finally found its reward.
Those thrills turn to sheer terror, however, when “Stowaway” makes good on its title and Halley sneaks aboard an alien craft… only to find the wonders she discovers snowball into a body-horror nightmare that gives The Substance‘s Monstro Elisasue some seriously ghastly competition. It’s an astonishing arc, made even more impressive by the fact that it’s compacted into the space of a short film.
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