villains

Move over, Michael Myers. Stand aside, Freddy Krueger. There is a new horror villain in Hollywood, and he is making Michael and Freddy look friendly by comparison. To call Art the Clown sadistic would be putting it kindly. For Art, killing is an art form.

Stone and Thompson are great talents when they have solid material to work with, but Cruella never finds sound footing. The allure of a classic-villain backstory is – presumably – to show fans how the person they’ve despised for all these years became so despicable. Questions abound. Were they born the epitome of evil, like Damien in The Omen, or were they overcome by all-consuming power, like young Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise? The answers to such questions are often ridiculously satisfying. The problem, of course, is that they can also be frustrating, especially when -- as happens in Cruella -- the filmmakers don’t pay proper homage to story canon.