There are some horror movie villains who are so awful that fans shiver even just thinking about them. The Saw franchise's Jigsaw is brutal, Leatherface is relentless in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, and Freddy Krueger terrorizes teens in A Nightmare On Elm Street.
While every villain is, of course, by nature a terrible person/creature/monster who kills people, there are some horror movie villains who garner sympathy from audiences because they appeal to fans' emotions. These villains have sad backstories and reasons that they become killing machines.
Daniel Robitaille/Candyman (Candyman)
Candyman is a timeless horror movie villain and has an incredibly upsetting backstory. Daniel Robitaille was a slave's child and he fell in love with a wealthy white girl. When her father learned what was going on, he had a lynch mob murder him. The mob cut off his right hand and put honey on him, which led to bees ultimately killing him.
Played by Tony Todd, Candyman is a villain who fans feel sympathy for, as the story of how he became the Candyman is one of the most affecting of any horror film.
Jason Voorhees (Friday The 13th)
Popular slasher villain Freddy Krueger can never be sympathetic as he has a dark, disturbing backstory of hurting kids, and now he's a monster who goes after teenagers via their dreams. But horror fans do have some empathy for Jason Voorhees with his famous hockey masks.
The Friday the 13th franchise villain was born in Crystal Lake with Hydrocephalus, a condition that meant that his head was bigger than usual. When he attended Camp Crystal Lake, the other campers bullied him, which was of course horrible. It's fair to say that while the movies do veer in different directions as the franchise progresses, Jason's backstory is at least clearly explained and laid out.
Adam Carr/Jeremy Melton/Cupid (Valentine)
When audiences find out that Adam (David Boreanaz) is really Jeremy Melton, the boy who the main characters bullied when they were younger, it's a big moment in the cheesy and forgotten 2000s horror movie Valentine. While of course no one would agree with Adam/Jeremy going on a killing spree to get revenge, audiences can understand that he was hurt by the bullying.
The movie shows a scene from a middle school dance when all Jeremy wanted was to be accepted, and when he asked the friend group to dance with him, they said no. Dorothy Wheeler (Jessica Capshaw) agrees and when her pals see them making out, she says that he assaulted her. Jeremy might not be a lackluster horror movie villain because he has the same motive as many others, but it's definitely easy to feel sorry for him and wish that his childhood had been happier.
Billy (Black Christmas)
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
Horror fans learn Billy's (Robert Mann) backstory in the 2006 Black Christmas remake and it's an absolutely terrible story. While the movie isn't the most compelling or well-done, it does explain why Billy becomes a killer.
William/Billy Lenz had liver disease as soon as he was born and his mom Constance (Karin Konoval) was horrible to Billy, verbally abusing him and hurting him as well. Constance killed the person who she had an affair with and also Billy's dad and then raped Billy so she can have his baby, Agnes (Christina Crivci). Billy has had one of the hardest childhoods and upbringings of any horror villain. While he's a bit campy and over-the-top, especially when he returns to go after the main characters who are sorority sisters, fans can at least empathize with what he went through when he was younger.
Ben Willis (I Know What You Did Last Summer)
Amazon's I Know What You Did Last Summer TV series didn't impress fans, but the 1997 movie still offers up some cheesy entertainment. The film's villain is also fairly sympathetic because of the sad life that he lived before he began his killing spree. The very premise of the film shows that the four main characters have committed a crime. Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Geller), Ray Bronson (Freddie Prince Jr.) and Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) are driving home after graduating from high school and accidentally run over Ben Willis (Muse Watson).
The characters think that he's dead and cover it up, vowing to not talk about it. Ben then goes after them, killing a lot of other people in the process. Of course, Ben Willis is definitely a horrible person and he has committed many crimes. When his daughter Susan Willis died in a car accident, Ben murdered Susan's fiance David Egan (Jonathan Quint) in a brutal way, sending him a note to meet up by a cliff and then pushing him over.