The 10 BEST Horror Video Game Bosses Ever

“Outlast: Whistleblower” (2014) Say what you will about the rampaging Chris Walker or the phantasmic Walrider, nothing in Mount Massive Asylum is as disturbing as Mr Gluskin. A psychotic killer obsessed with finding the perfect wife and starting a family, Eddie Gluskin has mutilated and strung up numerous patients during his incarceration, and naturally, the player character is next on his list of possible brides to be. After narrowly avoiding getting their intimate regions taken off by a saw blade, players had to duck and dodge Gluskin’s ongoing pursuit until, with a fair bit of struggling, they were able to turn the tables on him. It’s a brutal divorce that made this DLC worth every penny.

“The Evil Within” (2014) Take two of the scariest enemy tropes in horror, spiders and possessed little girls, smash them together, and you’ve got Laura. And we’re trapped in a room with her. Everything about Laura is just unsettling, from the way she emerges from corpses, how she crawls after us with her numerous flaying appendages, not to mention her immunity to bullets - every moment she hunts after us is hellish. Thankfully, her weakness to fire can be exploited in numerous ways throughout the level. Eh, maybe we were being too harsh, after all her backstory is really tragic - no, can’t do it, too scary, burn her again Sebastian!

The Countess

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“Darkest Dungeon” (2016) This merciless gothic RPG threw no shortage of depraved, disgusting and sanity-rendering creatures our way, but it was the final boss of its Crimson Court DLC that amped up both the difficulty and the revulsion. The creature responsible for the Crimson Curse, the Countess is an amalgamation of aristocrat, vampire and mosquito, with the fight against her being as challenging as she is ugly. Darkest Dungeon has never been one to hold back when it comes to the gruesomeness of its monsters, but this bloodsucker takes the cake!

“Blasphemous” (2019) Horror is baked into the bones of this souls-like, and with its rogues gallery of terrifying bosses inspired by Catholic iconography, we have no problem including…whatever this is. Out of everything the Penitent One has faced, we’d say battling against a giant blindfolded baby held up by a wicker woman certainly ticks all the WTF boxes. Throw in a human-faced snake creature that guards the infant, and you’ve got a bout that will certainly test your parry skills. That is, if the imagery of the unholy child weeping blood in the background doesn’t throw you off your game.

“Resident Evil 7: Biohazard” (2017) The Baker Family are all delightfully disgusting in their own way, but it’s the matriarch that really flipped out stomachs, and not just because of her cooking. Infected by Eveline, Marguerite was twisted into a murderous, insane bioweapon with a fondness for vomiting insects on her victims. If that wasn’t bad enough, when pushed into a corner, she goes full arachnid – extending her limbs, crawling on the ceiling and now sporting a hive on her nether regions. She doesn’t go down without a fight, but after everything she put us through, we were more than happy to help Ethan pump her full of lead.

“Alien: Isolation” (2014) Unlike her mother, Amanda Ripley doesn’t have the luxury of a power loader or marine weaponry, the only thing she, and by extension us, can hope to do against an uber intelligent, relentless alien, is to run, hide and hold our breath. Isolation’s take on the Xenomorph is a masterstroke of horror – borderline immune to damage, highly sensitive to sound and movement, and all too eager to catch us off guard in one of those insta-kill animations. By the time we finally launched it into space, many a nerve had been shredded.

The Baby

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“Resident Evil Village” (2021) Can’t tell what’s more disturbing – the fact that giant, misshapen children make for such prevalent bosses in horror games, or that Ethan Winters has the worst luck when it comes to family drama. Trapped inside of a literal house of horrors, we’re subjected to numerous illusions ranging from creepy mannequins to living dolls. But, nothing, and we do mean nothing, compares to the abject terror of watching a giant, screaming fetus monster slithering out of the darkness. With no way to fight back, the only option is to, once again run, hide, and get that damn elevator working. Not sure how Capcom is going to top this in RE9, but it’s going to be a hell of a hurdle, because this thing is haunting!

“Silent Hill 2” (2001) The retro poster boy of horror games, Pyramid Head’s iconic look cemented itself as a creature of dread from the get go. Its fondness for beheading people with its colossal knife and having its wicked way with corpses didn’t help either. However, what truly elevated Pyramid Head to legendary status, was the reveal it was a creature conjured by James’ guilty conscience after the mercy killing of his dying wife, just so it could punish himself for his sins. That’s twisted on an ethereal level, not to mention the final encounter with two of them makes for a grisly challenge.

The Hunter

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“Dead Space” (2023) While every Necromorph engineer Isaac Clark encountered was horrifying, at the very least their limbs could be snatched off with a few well-placed shots from the Plasma Cutter. The Hunter is the terrifying exception to the rule. Able to regenerate any lost limbs, this man-made monster will hunt Isaac all over the Ishimura. As bad as he was back in his heyday, the 2023 remake has given the Hunter a fresh coat of paint, a grizzly backstory and a second chance to scare the hell out of a new generation of gamers!

“Bloodborne” (2015) No one does boss battles better than FromSoftware, and they aren’t exactly slouches when it comes to conjuring up monsters that can truly unnerve you. Enter Ludwig – the pinnacle of their deranged creativity! What was once a noble soul is now a mesh of beast, blood and misshapen limbs, all contorted together in such a way that you’d swear it was born out of a Lovecraftian fever dream. The fact his second phase has him tap back into his former life as a warrior just adds to the impact. His time was fleeting, but the impression Ludwig made is likely never going be forgotten by fans of the genre!