2025 gifted audiences with more than a few memorable characters, from bumbling heroes to absurd horror antagonists. Whether they come from horror stories, sci-fi thrillers, mystery comedies, or crime capers, these characters perfectly encapsulate what this year was all about.
With this in mind, this list looks back at the very best characters from 2025 movies, the ones that are likely to linger in the public consciousness. These are all figures that arrived fully formed, reshaped genre expectations, or simply seized the cultural moment with force. From resurrected monsters to hardened survivors, from satirical icons to quietly devastating dramatic creations, the characters (and the actors who play them) significantly elevate each movie they’re a part of.
10
The Creature – ‘Frankenstein’
Jacob Elordi as the Creature examines a moss-covered skull in the woods in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025; Netflix)Image via Netflix
“I cannot live… alone.” Jacob Elordi continued to expand his acting repertoire in 2025, most notably with his turn as the famous Creature in Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. It’s a strong performance, and he succeeds in putting his stamp on a character that has already been portrayed countless times before. Plenty of actors have played Frankenstein’s monster as a lumbering symbol; Jacob Elordi’s Creature feels like a person waking up inside a crime he didn’t commit.
Elordi plays him with a heartbreaking mix of physical awkwardness and emotional clarity; every scene feels like he’s learning a new kind of pain. His character development is also convincing despite how rapid it is, going from monosyllabic and child-like to independent and fearsome. That said, not all fans of Mary Shelley’s novel liked how positively Del Toro’s script depicts the Creature. Some would have preferred the character to be a little more morally gray.
9
Ben Richards – ‘The Running Man’
Glen Powell in a red suit stares ahead intently with two men in uniforms behind in The Running Man.Image via Paramount Pictures
“I’m going to come back here and burn this building down. I promise.” Edgar Wright’s remake of the Stephen King banger is full of color and energy, serving up one killer action set piece after another. At the heart of it is a compelling, charismatic Glen Powell as Ben Richards. In the original novel and the 1987 movie, Richards is a potent sci-fi archetype, the honest working-class man thrown into a rigged game. However, the 2025 version sharpens him into something angrier and more contemporary.
He’s not a flawless revolutionary. Rather, he’s a terrified, occasionally selfish guy whose moral backbone keeps reasserting itself in a system built to punish backbone. His stubborn refusal to play the role he’s been assigned provides the narrative with its central momentum. In other words, Ben serves as a fairly sharp critique of the attention economy while remaining a deeply likable hero.
8
Rev. Jud Duplenticy – ‘Wake Up Dead Man’
Josh O’Connor as Jud in Wake Up Dead Man.Image via Netflix
“I take it you’re not a Catholic.” Josh O’Connor shone in last year’s Challengers, and this year he’s generated buzz once again with his turn as Rev. Jud Duplenticy in Wake Up Dead Man, the latest in the Knives Out series. A former fighter turned Catholic priest, Jud is exiled to the upstate New York parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after punching a deacon. There he collides with the fire-and-brimstone preacher Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). When Wicks is found dead, Jud becomes the prime suspect and spiritual focal point of Benoit Blanc’s (Daniel Craig) latest case.
What makes Jud such a brilliant character is that his crisis of faith is never abstract. It’s tangled up with class resentment, trauma, and the simple fact that he still wants to hit people who manipulate the vulnerable. It helps that O’Connor is fantastic in the part, frequently stealing the scene despite being flanked by heavy hitters like Craig, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, and more.
7
Marty Mauser – ‘Marty Supreme’
Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme.Image via A24
“I’m going to do to Kletzki what Auschwitz couldn’t.” Timothée Chalamet continues his run of stellar performances with Marty Supreme. Here, he plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champion inspired by Marty Reisman. He’s a wiry, twitchy hustler with terrible skin and a divine backhand, convinced that a paddle and an impossible work ethic are his only pathway out of poverty. The movie (Josh Safdie’s first solo feature) follows Marty from grimy basement clubs and smoke-choked union halls to the neon-lit upper tiers of the ping-pong circuit.
Along the way, his orbit slowly expands to include Kay Stone (Gywneth Paltrow), a faded movie star whose own self-destructive streak mirrors Marty’s addiction to winning. Safdie shoots their world like a contact high: the camera rattles around cramped halls, follows sweat-slick rallies, and lingers on the quiet moments of shame after Marty throws yet another match he was paid to lose. It adds up to one of the year’s very best character studies.
6
The Twins – ‘Sinners’
Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and Stack in SinnersImage via Warner Bros.
“That’s why we came back home. Figured we might as well deal with the devil we know.” Michael B. Jordan turns in an impressive dual performance in Sinners. The Smokestack Twins plan to open a juke point in 1930s Mississippi, but find themselves in a fight for survival involving vampires and killer music. In a lesser actor’s hands, Smoke and Stack would’ve just been slight variations on the same cool character, but Jordan plays them as a single fractured soul split down the middle.
Rather than being a visual gimmick, the Twins (and the fact that they’re played by a single actor) become key to the movie’s themes, which center on questions of unity and division. On the one hand, figures like the KKK represent the dangers of extreme division; on the other, the hivemind vampires represent unity taken to dark lengths. The Twins themselves embody this tension: operating as a single unit and yet still individuals.
5
Aunt Gladys – ‘Weapons’
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
“I can make your parents hurt themselves.” Every few years, horror gives us a new icon, and 2025 belongs to a hunched, grinning woman with a wig full of secrets. Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) in Weapons is introduced as the sickly great-aunt staying with little Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) as seventeen of his classmates vanish from their homes at exactly 2:17 a.m. Zach Cregger’s film unspools this mystery from multiple perspectives and slowly reveals that Gladys is the nexus point: a parasitic witch who has bewitched Alex’s parents and is feeding on the stolen children in their basement.
She stalks the town with a twig, hair clippings, and a bell, turning ordinary people into puppets. The character is grotesque and yet weirdly funny, threatening to make parents “eat each other” with the casual malice of someone commenting on the weather. It all makes Gladys’ final comeuppance one of the most satisfying movie moments of the year, the point where terror meets absurdity, perfectly embodied by a career-best Amy Madigan.
4
Kathryn St. Jean – ‘Black Bag’
Cate Blanchett with a badge by her mouth in ‘Black Bag’ (2025)Image via Focus Features
“I will kill for you, George. You know that.” In Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh does his usual trick of making everyone look like the smartest person in the room, then revealing that Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) might be the only one who actually is. She is the Head of Signals Operations at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the wife of NCSC interrogator George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender). The movie bucks genre conventions by making their marriage the real focus of the subterfuge and investigation.
As a whole, Black Bag is cool and stylish, managing to fit a lot of story into just 94 minutes, and Kathryn is a kind of microcosm of the film’s whole vibe. Perfectly brought to life by a fabulous and confident Cate Blanchett, she’s meticulous, funny in a bone-dry way, and terrifyingly good at staying three steps ahead of both her husband and the institutions that claim to protect her country.
3
Huntrix – ‘KPop Demon Hunters’
“The leather has betrayed us!” There’s a reason Huntrix became Netflix’s most-streamed animated heroes of the year: they’re built right at the collision point of fandom, pop stardom, and monster movie. In KPop Demon Hunters, the trio of Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) juggle sold-out arena tours with a secret night job maintaining the Honmoon, a shimmering magical barrier that keeps Seoul’s demons at bay. When the barrier begins to fail, and a more ancient evil crawls out of the underworld, it’s up to Huntrix to save humanity.
The appeal of the group goes beyond the slick visuals and banger soundtrack. The characters are interesting and surprisingly layered. Each girl has a different relationship to fame and duty, and KPop Demon Hunters plays those tensions against the slow grind of burnout and imposter syndrome. The finished product is an incredibly entertaining musical fantasy, a genuine cultural phenomenon and, arguably, Netflix’s greatest animated effort thus far.
2
Dr. Ian Kelson – ’28 Years Later’
Ralph Fiennes as Kelson covered in blood in 28 Years LaterImage via Sony Pictures Releasing
“There are many kinds of death.” Ralph Fiennes can always be counted on to turn in a phenomenal performance, and 28 Years Later is no exception. He plays Dr Ian Kelson, a hermit living in the dangerous forests of infected Britain. At first, he appears macabre and villainous, collecting corpses and building towering structures from their bones. But when Spike (Alfie Williams) and his ailing mother Isla (Jodie Comer) finally meet Kelson, they find that he’s kind and philosophical, realistic about the grimness of their situation without being defeatist or despairing.
That tension, between pragmatism and nihilism, between care and control, makes Kelson, in many ways, the moral spine of the movie. For Spike, Kelson becomes the twisted mentor who teaches him how to live in a world that has already ended. Few actors could strike such a fine balance between macabre and inspiring, but few actors are Ralph Fiennes.
1
Bob Ferguson – ‘One Battle After Another’
Image via Warner Bros.
“I need a weapon, man. All you’ve got are goddamn nunchuks here.” No film has been more acclaimed this year than One Battle After Another, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s lead performance in it is key to its success. Paul Thomas Anderson has always loved beautiful screw-ups, and Bob Ferguson might be his most combustible yet. He’s a former 1970s revolutionary who’s burned out into a paranoid, weed-smoking drifter hiding out in the desert sanctuary of Baktan Cross. He’s trying to be a decent single dad to his teenage daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), when the fascist colonel called Lockjaw (Sean Penn) descends on their lives.
Bob is forced back into the guerrilla mindset he thought he’d abandoned: stashing weapons, calling in old comrades, and treating every roadside stop like the opening move of a doomed heist. A big part of the fun is watching DiCaprio oscillate between bumbling, stoned anxiety and flashes of the charismatic street fighter he used to be. The ending is warm and feel-good without being cheesy or try-hard, a touching statement on love and family.