Samara, The Ring (2005)

Samara is the ultimate creepy child. It took me years to stop having nightmares about her, and she still gives me chills to this day. She has the power to psychically imprint macabre images into people’s minds and takes pleasure in torturing her adoptive parents and the horses that live on their farm with them. Eventually her mother, Anna, abandons her in a well where Samara manages to live for seven days.

Everything about the way Samara looks is nightmare fuel: her long, stringy black hair covers her decaying, angry face and her plain, ragged dress is drenched in dirty well-water, and she seemingly can’t be escaped. In her quest for vengeance, she spreads a haunted VHS tape filled with her nihilistic visions across the world and literally breaks through the television to kill you. She murders her victims in a gruesome way that makes them understand the torment she experienced at the bottom of the well. They are left with faces twisted and frozen in a permanent scream, horrifying images that burn into your brain forever.