There’s something compelling and memorable about a really good horror movie villain, whether it’s a creature, a phastasm, or a wise-cracking unkillable murderer. This month, we asked our staff to name their favorite bad guys (or bad whatevers!):

Justin: While it doesn’t say a lot, the xenomorph from the Alien series has always fascinated — and terrified — me ever since I was a teen. The way it’s born out of people’s chests, the creepy eyeless HR Gieger design, and its extreme lethality make it one of the best constructed monsters in the horror genre. I like how the creature comes in many varieties and can keep adapting to different situations and story beats. Now I really need to get my hands on Alien Romulus soon…

Sitting Duck: Rather than feature a more traditional villain, let us consider how, with rare exception, everyone sees themselves as the heroes in their stories. Meanwhile, the villains in those stories are the heroes in their stories, with the heroes becoming the villains in a veritable dos-a-dos of moral ambiguity.

Which brings us to the genuinely creepy horror-themed anime Dark Gathering and its nominal protagonist Yayoi Hozuki. Yayoi is an eight-year-old girl who possesses double-pupiled eyes that allow her to see into the spirit realm. In the recent past, her parents had died in a car accident. As Yayoi watched them pass on, a massive thing snatched away her mother to who knows what fate.

In response, Yayoi has engaged in what could be regarded as some morally gray behavior. She believes the best way to free her mother is by recruiting an army of ghosts to take down this entity. She goes about this by binding any spooks she encounters to plushies, from which she can summon them up like spectral Pokémons. They get trained by being pitted against one other, ending with the stronger spirit consuming the weaker one. To ensure they don’t turn on her, Yayoi applies the principles of sympathetic magic wherein they become a sort of spiritual ablative armor. So in a cruel twist, these ghosts must make every effort to protect their captor from whatever harm may come her way to guarantee their continued existence, including any of their fellow captives who may have decided they have nothing to lose.

Like Robert Neville of I Am Legend, Yayoi is the terrifying monster from the viewpoint of those we would normally perceive as the terrifying monsters. And make no mistake, some of the ghosts she has bound are and have always been pretty nasty. Even so, you do worry about the lengths an eight-year-old who wants her mommy back will go to.

Drake: I’m gonna go old-school slasher here and pick Jason Voorhees, simply for the absurdity of his very existence. I mean, look, we all know that Jason as we know the character didn’t even appear in Friday the 13th, as his body was supposed to be resting somewhere in Crystal Lake. But, needing a villain for the sequel, Jason was revealed to have been alive all along, and quite ready and willing to slaughter a new round of camp counselors in revenge for the death of his mother.

The mother who was avenging Jason’s supposed death in the first flick, mind you, but we need to abandon both common and narrative sense when approaching the Friday the 13th series in general and Jason Voorhees in particular. After all, he’s been seemingly dispatched on several occasions only to return time and again to menace the Crystal Lake community. He’s killed once and for all by a machete-wielding Tommy Jarvis and then accidentally resurrected two films later by a much older Tommy, turning Jason from a hulking horror into a veritable supervillain who fights a telekinetic heroine before going to New York City and getting dissolved by toxic waste.

Which, let’s face it, would be at least a minor setback for most villains, but Jason just shrugs off literal disintegration and happily returns to his murderous ways, fights Freddy Krueger and then gets shot into space. And granted, there are many who don’t particularly care for Jason X, but I love it. The absurdity is on full display here and the filmmakers just roll with it, upgrading Jason into a futuristic killing machine who would give even Darth Vader pause. It was a wild note for OG Jason to go out on, and unfortunately the negative fan reaction ensured we’d never see CyberJason stalking teens on Earth II.

Still, Jason’s two decade run was filled with the kind of unrestrained mayhem most horror villains can only dream of. We can only hope that he can eventually carve his way out of an IP rights struggle and emerge, machete in hand, ready to once again chase camp counselors across the silver screen at a theater near you.