Building atmosphere and believability in any movie requires a meticulous build of details. Horror movies require a much more careful balance of details. Fear is a hard emotion to muster, especially when considering what needs to cause that fear. A movie monster can’t make you laugh, imagine if ET hunted people with a knife? It just wouldn’t work. So, where does it work? Here are five horror movie villains that will make you jump.
5 Alien
Whether it’s the double jaw, the chest-bursting, or its emotionless face, the Xenomorph is the apex of movie monsters. What makes this creature so chilling, is how sparsely it fills the frame in the Alien series and how it supplants humans at the top of the food chain.
Beyond the chest-bursting scene, the Xenomorph frequents the shadows, growing and preparing to snack on crewmates. Until the film nears its climax, much of the rampaging is documented through the results; shown in disappearing crewmates, or beeps on the motion sensors. This gradually builds tension, making the full reveal and conflict with the alien that much tenser.
What the lurking nature of the Xenomorph also creates is a hunter vs prey dynamic. The xenomorph, successfully, out hunts the entire crew except for the cat and Ripley, staying hidden and striking from the dark. This is also what makes the Xenomorph so successful, as it kindles a primal survival fear within us by instilling the fact, slowly and surely, that humans aren’t the biggest fish in the pond anymore.
4 Pazuzu
While the Xenomorph is an incredible embodiment of that primal hunter vs prey dynamic, Pazuzu from The Exorcist begins to tap into a much darker, more fantastical side of fear. The Exorcist of course builds on a biblical sort of fear, as Pazuzu is an embodiment of sin and evil, similar to The Devil. Not only is this shown in the gruesome decay and crooked motions of Regan, the possessed child, but, like Alien, much of the fear spawns from the protagonist’s apparent futility against the creature.
The priest, Damien, struggles with his own purity and pious devotion while exorcising Pazuzu. In part, this is related to Damien’s own impurity, he can’t match the idealized nature of good. However, he also can’t stand the overwhelming evil of Pazuzu. By being such an embodiment of evil, in its words, actions, and its whole presence throughout the film, Pazuzu cements itself as one of horror movies’ creepiest.
3 The Thing
While John Carpenter’s The Thing showcases, arguably, the best practical effects of all time, it pairs such with a bone-cold chilling creature, the titular, The Thing. The Thing is an amorphous alien which can biologically match any living creature, down to matching each cell.
This creature physically turns into horrific combinations of dogs, humans, all sorts of beasts, but its most notable beats of horror are when it can’t be seen. When The Thing is hiding among people, it is indistinguishable from any person. This drives incredible sums of stress and paranoia in every character, as they don’t know who is human and who might be The Thing.
As the viewer, we watch the characters fight amongst each other, and that raises our own fear and stress. In the end, that’s what makes The Thing such a creepy monster. While its actions are gory, the paranoia it creates in the characters makes us question who to trust all the same, making The Thing one of horror’s best monsters.
2 Freddy Krueger
As a kid, the biggest refuge I found from fear was sleeping. It was a place where all my worries melted away. That was the case until I saw Nightmare on Elm Street, and then, all of a sudden, I didn’t want to sleep.
Krueger himself is not that terrifying. In fact, he’s kind of dressed like a scarecrow when you think about it. However, the fear that he creates is so potent because of where he strikes. Dreams are a refuge for most people. His ability to take that away and make people fear sleep is horrifying to think about. It doesn’t get much creepier than that.
1 Jason Voorhees
The dark is an age-old fear. We fear what may be hiding in the darkness. Jason Vorhees, especially after he dons the hockey mask, is the perfect embodiment of that fear because he is simply danger lurking in the darkness.
While he very much encapsulates the slasher sub-genre of horror Friday The 13th, his passivity is what truly comes across as so scary. Without showing empathy, to practically anyone or anything in the entire series, Jason becomes a chilling embodiment of death, and its inevitability as he hunts the characters down. In consequence, Jason is one of horror’s greatest villains, seen in how, with almost machine-like efficiency, he coldly dices his victims.