14 Years Later, Fans Have Forgotten About Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Creepiest Villain Role (& It's Even Darker Than Negan)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan's most recent performance was as Negan in The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2, featuring him once again battling enemies in post-apocalyptic Manhattan. Unfortunately, viewers have not been impressed with the storyline and characterization his long-running character has received, with many preferring when he was a villain in The Walking Dead. The actor has a talent for playing antagonists, consistently surprising viewers with his ability to realistically portray terrible people.

While he's known for roles like John Winchester in Supernatural and Denny Duquette on Grey's Anatomy, he deserves more credit for his movie performances, especially when he's playing a villain. Some of these antagonists are familiar to die-hard fans of Morgan, but many have forgotten about his underrated thriller from 2011. In The Resident, Morgan once again plays a villain, but one that will likely make viewers shiver and grimace far more than even Negan in his most deplorable scenes made them.

The Resident Is a Standard Thriller Movie

The Resident is not the best thriller movie of all time, but instead honors the genre by embracing all the iconic tropes and themes it's known for. At the beginning of the movie, Juliet (Hilary Swank) has recently left her spouse due to infidelity and is looking for a new place to live. She rents an apartment from a friendly landlord, Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and goes on a date with him due to shared attraction and a need to move on from her ex. However, in the heat of the moment, Juliet realizes she can't be with Max, turning him down gently before trying to rekindle her relationship with her former spouse, Jack (Lee Pace).

Midway through The Resident, it's revealed that Max has been stalking Juliet since he saw her working as an ER doctor, planting an ad for an apartment where he knew she would find it, renovating her new place with a two-way mirror and secret passages, and following her so they could "conveniently" run into one another. After her rejection, Max begins drugging Juliet, sneaking into her bedroom while she sleeps, and touching her. When Juliet, unbeknownst to Max, puts cameras in her apartment and gets a drug test due to sleeping in late, she realizes what he's been doing, resulting in an action-packed fight for survival in the finale.

One of the biggest criticisms of this thriller is that the audience finds out relatively quickly that Max is the one stalking Juliet, leaving the ending without any twists or surprising revelations. However, the eeriest part about watching The Resident is that the viewer has to watch Max stalk and assault Juliet, intensely waiting for her to finally realize why she can't get up in the morning or why she feels like she's being watched. This is a different kind of suspense than many stalker movies, moving away from a hooded stranger in the bushes or hiding in someone's closet, but it does add a nice change to the formula of these familiar narratives.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Max Is the Creepiest Stalker

Thriller movies that involve stalkers are often some of the most unsettling, because it's one of the most realistic scenarios, especially for single women like Juliet who are living alone. People like to feel secure in their own homes and doing the things they enjoy, so the concept of someone being so obsessed with another that they disrupt their safety and well-being is a horrifying situation. For this reason, Max in The Resident is Jeffrey Dean Morgan's creepiest villain role, portraying an unstable, obsessive stalker with diabolical intentions who invades nearly every aspect of his victim's life, including her job, romantic relationships, and home.

One of the creepiest things about Max is that he seems to develop an obsession with Juliet instantly and without knowing her at all, spotting her from a distance and believing he has a right to take over her life, emphasizing how unpredictable and illogical he is. While some renditions of these antagonists involve them finding a way into their victim's home, Max is so determined to have Juliet that he creates a cage and traps her inside without her even knowing it until it's too late. This single-goal obsession is a terrifying version of stalkers, making it slightly less realistic but far more unsettling than most of these storylines.

Watching Max victimize Juliet and waiting for the moment when she puts it together is a different kind of mystery than most stalker plots, but it works in The Resident, forcing the viewer to witness the grotesque things he does while the victim wakes up dazed and confused. The scenes when he's watching her are chilling, but the moments in which he touches her while she sleeps, such as the scene when he sucks on her pinky finger while her hand is hanging off the bed, are enough to make any viewer's skin crawl. By the time Juliet figures it out and decides to fight back, there's an eerie sense of personal offense laced into the impact, making the audience feel a sense of justice when she gets revenge.

At Least Negan Has Redeemable Qualities

Jeffrey Dean Morgan has had an extensive and impressive acting career, but in pop culture, he's known for playing Negan in The Walking Dead franchise since the end of Season 6, for about the last decade. In this show, he played one of the most dangerous villains, once again proving his talent as an antagonist. However, Negan is now one of the most popular main characters in the post-apocalyptic franchise, known for having one of the most exceptional redemption arcs in the series, highlighting how many villains can become good with the right characterization and storyline development.