You find Murderbot's Gurathin creepy? Here are 5 other disturbing characters played by David Dastmalchian

There’s something about Gurathin that’s hard to shake. David Dastmalchian plays him well. The cold, clipped speech. The eyes that never quite settle. The sense that, even in silence, he’s quietly judging every life form in the room—and maybe considering how best to neutralize them. If you’ve been watching Murderbot, you’ve probably felt it too. He doesn’t scream villain. He doesn’t raise his voice. But you wouldn’t want to be alone with him in a locked room either.

The unease he brings isn’t just about the writing. It’s in the performance. And if Gurathin gave you the chills, you’re not alone. Actor David Dastmalchian has built a career on playing characters who feel just a little… wrong. Not evil, exactly. Just unsettling in a way that gets under your skin.

Here are five of David Dastmalchian's most disturbing roles—and no, Murderbot doesn’t even crack the top five.

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1. Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad (2021)

He throws glowing polka dots and hallucinates his mother in everyone he fights. That sentence alone could win an award for emotional whiplash. As Polka-Dot Man, David Dastmalchian takes what could have been a throwaway joke character and turns him into something tragic, twisted, and deeply human. His trauma isn’t just backstory—it’s an active, grotesque presence. Every explosion of color is a cry for help. Every nervous glance carries the weight of someone who never asked to survive this long.

The character’s power set is absurd. His pain is not. And David Dastmalchian plays the line between the two with surgical discomfort.

2. Joker's henchman in The Dark Knight (2008)

He only gets a few minutes of screen time, but you remember him. The twitchy man in the police uniform. The one they find with a name tag reading “Rachel Dawes” and a stomach full of explosives. He doesn’t laugh or shout. He just stares, lost in some private logic that no one else can access.

Dastmalchian’s performance is barely above a whisper, but it rattles. He plays the kind of disturbed loyalty that makes you question if the Joker really needs to raise chaos at all. Maybe it just finds him. This was one of his first major roles, and even then, he had already perfected the art of being quietly terrifying.

3. Piter De Vries in Dune (2021)

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t breathe like a normal person. And when he speaks, it sounds like each syllable has been polished to a sharp edge. As Piter De Vries in Dune, a twisted Mentat serving House Harkonnen, David Dastmalchian is a presence made of poison and calculation. He stands beside monsters and somehow feels more dangerous than all of them.

There’s nothing cartoonish about this performance. No wild gestures. Just a man whose intelligence has been shaped into something predatory. Piter doesn’t need brute force—he kills with foresight. And with David Dastmalchian behind the eyes, you get the sense that if he stared at you long enough, you’d start forgetting your own name.

4. Lester Billings in The Boogeyman (2023)

He walks into a therapist’s office and tells a story about his children dying. That’s how it starts. Calm voice, haunted eyes, the air of a man who’s either unraveling or already hollowed out. And then he leaves. What follows is the trail of something he brought with him—something waiting in the dark.

As Lester Billings, David Dastmalchian doesn’t need much screen time to ruin your sense of safety. His performance is skin-tight and miserable, like a man rotting from the inside. He’s not the monster. He’s just the one who saw it first and couldn’t close the door fast enough. And somehow, that makes him even harder to forget.

5. Jack Delroy in Late Night with the Devil (2023)

At first, he’s all charm. The voice, the hair, the pacing of a man who knows exactly how to hold a room. But something’s off. The eyes flicker. The pauses stretch just a beat too long. And when the darkness finally breaks through the broadcast, you realize Jack Delroy was never really hosting the show. He was inviting something in.

David Dastmalchian carries the entire film on a knife’s edge. His performance doesn’t shout “possessed” or “evil.” It just leans ever so slightly out of sync with reality, like a VHS that’s beginning to warp. Jack’s not a villain. He’s a man who opens the door, smiles into the void, and keeps smiling as it answers back.

David Dastmalchian: The quiet kind of terrifying

Gurathin might be the latest in a long line of unsettling roles, but he fits right in. David Dastmalchian doesn’t play monsters. He plays men who’ve seen too much, heard too little, and came back wrong. Whether it’s science fiction, horror, or something that lives in between, he makes sure you never quite feel safe in the room.

And honestly? That’s exactly why we keep watching.