Some of the best Scream Kings to honor this Halloween
By Rachel Roth
15. Spencer Treat Clark
It’s a shame that almost no one knows who this guy is, of course there are some who know, they just don’t know that they know. If any one of those non-knowers has seen Unbreakable (2000) or Gladiator (2000) than you’ve seen him as a little boy, he played Bruce Willis’s son and Commodus’s nephew. Now he’s all grown up and apparently likes slasher flicks.
Bestowed with an innocent fox-like face and baby blue eyes, he looks like the last person you’d expect to be in multiple horror movies. His presence usually brings a softer feel to the tense atmosphere of horror movies because he generally illustrates shy/kind-hearted characters, but he’s shown himself capable of playing dark just as well. In the remake The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2014) he played a serial killer and did a convincing job of it, even though every time I look at him I still see that little boy helping Bruce Willis lift weights eighteen years ago. A true modern scream king, he masters the dorky and quiet persona with an edge if pushed. Other horror movies featuring Clark include The Last House on the Left (2009), Deep Dark Canyon (2012), The Last Exorcism Part II (2013), and Camp Hope (2010).
Clark will reprise his character from Unbreakable, Joseph Dunn, in M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming sequel film, Glass.
14. Evan Peters
The only male actor on American Horror Story to appear in every season, Evan Peters is a fresh face in the massive pool of horror stars who melted the hearts of women and teenage girls everywhere when he first appeared in AHS as Tate Langdon in 2011. Tate shouldn’t be a fan-favorite considering he’s a psychopathic ghost responsible for a big chunk of the deaths in season 1 and raped his girlfriend’s mother, but who doesn’t love a tortured soul with big brown eyes.
After playing Tate, Peters went on to play other characters on AHS including a wrongly convicted serial killer, a Golem, an angry circus performer, another ghostly killer (much more frightening than his first), an actor, a plantation owner and various cult leaders including Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh. His many portrayals on the horror series deserve recognition from all angles. If his season four character, James Patrick March, got in his own movie, it’d probably be one of the most terrifying serial killer films ever made. March’s coarse accent was enough to both enthrall and chill you.
Outside of American Horror Story, Peters appeared in another horror television series that ran for one season, Invasion (2005-2006) and appeared in the movies, An American Crime (2007) and The Lazarus Effect (2015)
Fun fact: Evan Peters is one of the few scream kings that has his own queen. He’s been engaged to his American Horror Story co-star Emma Roberts since 2014. Roberts was also on a show called Scream Queens that ran from 2015 to 2016.