Nothing is more iconic to the horror genre than the depressingly tragic backstory to its iconic killers. In almost every bit of horror media you come across, the sociopathic killer is given a sprinkle of sympathy by the author through their mentally destructive pasts. It is this widely used literary trope that has made audiences connect with a villainous character as crazy as Leatherface, the same guy who makes furniture out of literal human body parts.

For Samara from The Ring movie franchise, we get a tragic backstory about abuse in her childhood that led to her insanity and lust for killing people who even dare glance at her murderous cursed videotape. In the case of Norman Bates in both the movie Psycho and the TV series Bates Motel, abuse in his childhood from either his father or mother led to his murderous appetite for women taking a casual night shower. With The Joker in DC comics, if you believe his narrative in The Killing Joke one shot graphic novel, the loss of his wife and unborn child led to the "one bad day" where he was splashed into chemicals after being mistaken for the notorious Red Hood, falling into insanity. Heck, even the rabid dog Cujo gets this treatment as a rabid bat was the tragic cause of his insanity. No matter where you go, a tragic backstory is bound to come up for the horror villain.

While crafting these tragic backstories does given the audience a sense of connection towards the horror villain in question, it additionally takes away from the character's overall intimidation factor. The scariest horror characters are those whose backstories are unknown and operate on a demented level through their own independent choices. There is a reason that fear of the unknown remains so commonly effective in many horror narratives, especially towards its characters. The less you know about something, the more you fear the object due to having no means to fill in the gaps with logic. By crafting tragic backstories for these horror villains, you make them too sympathetic to the audience, thus turning your intended scare feast into a mini pity party.

Then there is the real life issue of adding sympathy to truly bad people. All of the characters mentioned above in the end of the day are demented killers, who would easily kill you in a second if given the chance. They are beyond psychological help. Adding sympathy to their characterization is going to wrongly excuse these horrendous individuals' ghastly actions in the past.

The best horror villains are those who the audience fear for being so heartlessly cruel. These horrendous individuals have no prior motivation for their sickly killings. They just decided one day that humanity was not worth protecting anymore and started their ghastly murder sprees. Nothing motivates these sick people except the thrill of the kill, and the rush of adrenaline when their hands are covered in the blood of innocent lambs. There is no past to add sympathy to these demented creatures. All they crave to do is to kill, and kill again if given the chance.

That is what makes a creature such as the wendigo so scary to so many people. These humanoid deer creatures choose to randomly appear towards local villages or towns in times of extreme famine. Taking advantage of the already dark state of things, they slaughter innocent soul after innocent soul with their dark powers. The wendigo in question will not end this murder spree unless scared off or killed by a brave enough local. Without those motivators, the wendigo will just keep killing until no one is left but them. Then, they just move on to the next village or town suffering from a famine and make their move once again.

That is not even mentioning the wendigo's connection to a gruesome aspect of human nature that even the bravest soul flinches at the mention of; cannibalism. The very idea of consuming the flesh of another human being has been a topic that has sickened and chilled the purest of human souls for centuries. The wendigo plays around with this fear, creating gripping tales of unimaginable horror. It additionally creates a strong motivator for the humans trying to fight against it, crafting a tale of restoring the basic dignities of humanity.

Horror villains that remain mysterious creepy, having no sympathetic motivator for their actions, make for the strongest of antagonistic foes in a basic narrative. After all, a horrific creature you know nothing about is much scarier than someone with a tragic backstory ever will be. Plus, you don't have to potentially cross a moral line by excusing their actions as nothing more than a byproduct of a toxic environment. The more unknown a character is presented to be, the scarier they will be to the audience.