When James McAvoy landed his earliest major starring roles in Atonementand Wanted, it seemed like his career was headed in a particular direction. But then, like Leonardo DiCaprio before him, he showed the world that he had more in his arsenal than just one kind of character. Over the next decade, McAvoy went on to play one of the most noble superheroes of all time, Charles Xavier, in the X-Men reboot series, but he also headlined a trio of movies in which he played off-kilter characters that truly shook his fans to the core. The most prominent of these movies has to be Split, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The horror-thriller served as a sizzle-reel of sorts for McAvoy’s range. A few years before Split, he played a chaotic Scottish detective in an adaptation of Trainspotting writer Irvine Welsh‘s Filth. Any doubt regarding McAvoy’s abilities was put to rest a couple of years ago, when he played another unhinged type in a sleeper hit that will soon leave its streaming home.
The movie in question was released theatrically in 2024. It featured McAvoy as a man’s man who, along with his wife, invites an unsuspecting couple to his countryside cottage for a vacation. When the couple shows up, hidden secrets come to light. The film was directed by James Watkins, who is set to direct the upcoming DC Universe body horror film Clayface. Watkins broke out with the acclaimed horror film Eden Lake, and went on to direct Daniel Radcliffe in The Woman in Black.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
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Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
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🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
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Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
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Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
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Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
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Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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Here’s How Long You Have Left To Watch James McAvoy’s Unhinged Performance
His movie with McAvoy, of course, is Speak No Evil. A remake of the critically acclaimed 2022 Danish film of the same name, Speak No Evil was rather well received itself. Both movies incidentally hold “Certified Fresh” 83% scores on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus for the remake reads, “Harnessing sick suspense from the glimmer in James McAvoy’s eye, Speak No Evil is the rare remake that hushes up concerns of ‘been there, done that’.” Also featuring Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, and Aisling Franciosi, the remake was commercially successful, grossing $77 million worldwide against a reported budget of $15 million. Speak No Evil is currently streaming on Peacock in the United States, but it will be removed from the platform on June 6. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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