10 Monster Reveals That Completely Ruined Horror Movies
Horror movies are sometimes best when the audience can fill in the blanks, and these disappointing monster reveals prove so.
- Horror movie monsters should have chilling designs that are only revealed briefly for the maximum scare factor.
- Weak creature designs in horror movies can ruin the atmosphere and tension created by the film.
- The reveal of a monster can sometimes be a letdown after a buildup of intense suspense and mystery.
Horror Movies are the best when they're preying on the audience's fear of the unknown, but sometimes, they pull back the curtain to reveal a ridiculous monster that retroactively ruins all the scary goodwill they built. The best horror movie monsters have chilling, unnatural designs that viewers are only given brief glimpses of, amplifying the scare factor upon the full reveal of a deranged creature that's every bit as terrifying as imagined. Unfortunately, this can be a difficult thing to pull off, and many creature designs simply don't cut it in terms of being genuinely scary.
Often, what horror movie fans can imagine winds up being far scarier than what the films themselves can afford, with shoestring budgets greatly limiting how well horror producers can deliver on the promise of their films. Other times, the atmosphere and tension filmmakers create are ruined by the presence of a monster at all, with no creature design being good enough to justify pulling back the curtain on a singular entity being behind the scares vs. the shattered mind of the protagonists. Horror movies with weak creature designs would be better off having no monsters revealed at all.
10 PHOTOS
10The Langoliers
The Langoliers (1995)
Based on the Stephen King book series Four Past Midnight, the two-part made-for-TV special The Langoliers follows a group of airplane passengers who find themselves stranded in a state of suspended time. The suspense and mystery of the dire situation is utterly dispensed with the reveal of the duology's titular monsters, the time-devouring Langoliers. While the monsters may technically be accurate to the book, described as spherical floating orbs with giant toothy maws, the shoestring budget for the creatures' animation presents a horde of rubbery, mouthed basketballs that gently glide through the air, a sight that undermines the film's tension.
9 The Cloverfield Monster
Cloverfield (2008)
The advertisement campaign for Cloverfield generated one of the biggest hype trains for a movie in the mid-2000s, with evocative disaster imagery that presented no definitive answer as to what could be causing the destruction. The found-footage horror movie would eventually reveal the source of the chaos to simply be a giant monster, with an admittedly original design. The Cloverfield monster is unique and cool-looking, but was undeniably a letdown after such an intense build-up, and the subsequent confusing trilogy of Cloverfield movies didn't help the film's legacy.
8 The Blair Witch
Blair Witch (2016)
The original The Blair Witch Project sowed the seeds for Cloverfield, both in terms of essentially inventing the found-footage genre and creating a daring marketing buzz that had some moviegoers convinced that the Blair Witch was real. While the first film knew better than to ruin its scares by actually showing the titular witch, the sequels didn't honor the first film's innovative terror, with 2016's Blair Witch giving a glimpse of a gaunt, stumbling witch creature. While writer Simon Barret tried to backpedal, claiming the creature wasn't the witch herself, the movie certainly presents it as such.
7 The Alien
Man Vs. (2015)
The overlooked survival horror film Man Vs. had an incredible setup, following a TV star survivalist in the style of Man vs Wild or Survivorman in the middle of filming his new show, completely alone, only to be terrorized by a mysterious presence. The film does an excellent job of slowly ratcheting up the tension as an entity of the woods creeps in on the protagonist, Duncan. Tragically, the entire narrative is soured not only by the lackluster and generic-looking CGI alien but the reveal of an invasion of the entire planet that took place while Duncan was away.
6 Pennywise's Spider Form
IT (1990)
Adapting Stephen King's infamous book, the original IT TV duology did a great job chilling the spines of viewers with Tim Curry's Pennywise for the most part. Unfortunately, the climactic final battle against the ancient creature, assuming the form of a giant spider, left a lot to be desired. Even if it is faithful to the original book, the final form of such a powerful being that feasts on fear being something that wouldn't look out of place as a Halloween decoration is bitterly disappointing, and both the original Part Two of IT and the 2019 remake suffer for it.
5 The Darkness
House On Haunted Hill (1999)
A remake of the 1959 haunted house thriller of the same name, House On Haunted Hill shows great promise in the first half. Following a group of strangers competing to see who can last the longest staying the night in an abandoned insane asylum for a cash prize, things quickly go off the rails when the group is locked inside, being slowly torn apart by claustrophobia and infighting as well as the house's mysterious evil aura. Sadly, this evil aura gets personified as a cheap-looking CGI ghost creature, referred to as The Darkness, utterly defusing any tension the film built.
4 The Creature
Hypothermia (2012)
Few settings lend themselves to horror like desolate Arctic environments, and the indie horror film Hypothermia takes full advantage of this. The film tells the story of a family who goes ice fishing only to be assailed by an amphibious creature, showing off some great performances, believable chemistry, and tense action scenes. Unfortunately, all of this is undermined by an unforgivably cheap creature design, a painfully obvious rubber suit that turns what could be a solid horror film into a ridiculous campy comedy.
3 Bagul
Sinister (2012)
Once lauded as the most scientifically frightening horror movie, Sinister is a darkly atmospheric thriller whose mystery and depraved acts of violence create a pressure cooker of horrific tension. As the true-crime novelist protagonist investigates the ghastly recorded crimes of mere children, the presence behind the sacrifices reveals himself to be Bagul, a Babylonian deity. Rather than something more interesting, the supernatural force behind the murders a generic demon that looks more like a member of the band Slipknot was a monstrously underwhelming ending to an otherwise gripping horror tale.
2 Jason Unmasked
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
The premiere strong, silent type of the slasher subgenre, Jason is an unfeeling undead murderer whose signature hockey mask is far more interesting than any deformed face. Unfortunately, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan made the mistake of giving fans a glimpse of Jason under the mask, shedding light on a goofy, deformed zombie face that undermined what little fear the tired character still had left to inspire. Part VIII of the Friday the 13th franchise makes far more mistakes than that, but Jason's lame SFX was the disappointing cherry on top.
1 The Angels
The Human Race (2013)
The Human Race thrusts its eclectic cast into an odd scenario, as a mysterious force abducts a group of strangers and forces them to race each other on foot endlessly around a confined industrial area, brutally killing those who lag or step out of line. The film's sense of mystery evaporates when it is revealed that the culprits behind the race have been doing the same thing to other alien races, and reward the film's sole human survivor by pitting him against an angel-like alien. The Human Race's unforgettable awkward monster reveal should go down in horror movie infamy.
Keywords: Monster Reveals | Cinema | Horror movies | Horror films | Hollywood movies | Scary films