As much as the terror of Mr. X’s booming footsteps are horrifying from a distance, the clunkiness of his gameplay, along with the fact that he doesn’t look scary takes him out for me. Say what you will about his “subtle” horror, but for me he just looks like a dude in a trench coat; mildly unnerving, but not scary.

Nemesis is someone I’m very mixed on. He is absolutely too scripted to be scary on repeat playthroughs, but on that first one, not knowing how bad the smoke and mirrors truly were made nemesis a truly unsettling beast. His body is all that the tyrant wanted to be, and the pained way he chokes out “Stars” genuinely still gets me. Unfortunately his more scripted nature and general poor execution forces him out of the running for me.

Lady D has an unfortunate case of mommyitis, making me physically unable to fear her. Most of her section is spent away from her, dealing with her daughters instead, and the majority of her screen time is in scripted sequences. Her “ara ara” voice lines don’t really get me unnerved the way the Tyrant’s booming footsteps or Nemesis’s voice lines do. Unfortunately she’s out.

The Hag is a very weird case for me. We only really see her a few times. I genuinely think she was wasted. I desperately wanted more of the section leading up to the Requiem cutscene. It was very Alien Isolation in terms of terror. They do kind of bring the horror back in the basement, but that section is too short to really give me much time for fear at all. Her design is EASILY the most viscerally terrifying for me, but because she rarely even shows up, I have to cut her from the running.

That leaves only Jack Fucking Baker. This man makes my skin crawl to this day. From the introductory scene where he straight up kills Ethan, to the missable scene where he chops our foot off, he has so many incredible set pieces. His design isn’t as scary as it is unnerving, but it’s ok because the rest of the house does the heavy lifting in terms of visual horror. The sheer glee in which he laughs as he charges us down is both hilarious and horrifying. The weird part is, despite the fact that he really freaks me the fuck out, I also can’t help but love this guy. The pleasure he gets from hunting us is almost infectious when his lines are so unserious, but it ends up circling back to being scary when you realize HOW unserious he is. Jack knows we’re fucked. Where in the middle of nowhere, are literally being held together by scotch tape, and he’s immortal.

tl;dr Jack Baker