However, I hate content aggregation [i.e. stealing content from other creators, in the name of "sharing"], so I insisted on doing my own research. This resulted in me doing even more work for this listicle than I did for the first two AI posts combined.
I enjoyed the research, it was fun, but it was exhausting. So, I genuinely hope you enjoy this, because it was way more work than I anticipated.
The idea is simple. I wanted to find some of the most inhuman villains in scary movies. I'm not just talking about immorality or insanity, since the maniacs, monsters, aliens and the undead are probably more common than humans in popular horror movies.
No, I wanted things that are so inhuman, we can't really understand how they think, or why they do what they do. One of the things I truly love about fiction is the freedom. If you want to write a story about a cheese grater, you can and someone has probably already written erotic fanfiction about it... "shred me, daddy"
Anyway, so, those were my rules:
- No Ghosts (that's just dead humans)
- No Animals (too related to humans)
- No Talking (language is a human invention - also, talking monsters tend to be written like humans, because writing something inhuman is hard)
There were two other minor rules.
+ Avoid Parody - I looked at all kinds of strange, inhuman things, like Killer Sofas, Killer Condoms, Killer Jeans, Killer Colonic Polyps, Killer Refrigerators & Killer Tyres, but they're often written to be stupid on purpose, not actually exploring the concept too deeply. I didn't watch most of them, so I can't say they all suck, but it wasn't what I was looking for.
+ Avoid Repeats - If I really wanted to, I could have filled the list with killer dolls, there's a LOT of them... (note to self, I might save that for a later Halloween Countdown). So, to make it interesting, I tried to make each item as unique as possible. I really wanted to explore the possibility of what a monster can be, and what kind of fears you come across when you're facing a monster unlike anything you've ever known.
So, let's do this, starting with the Honourable Mentions. Let's get these out of the way, they're interesting ideas, but they broke my rules.
i. Jack Frost (1997)
The Monster: Evil Ice
The fact that this is full of cheesy jokes might have relegated it to "parody", but despite that it's actually kind of clever. This isn't just a snowman wobbling around with a knife - it's killer ice. What makes Jack Frost dangerous is that he can melt, change and refreeze himself. He can slip through doors, he can grow sharp icicle teeth and claws, he can turn to steam, he can freeze people and in one scene he even crawls down someone's throat like a killer slushie.
More importantly, since he can refreeze himself, the obvious solution of "melt the monster" isn't an option. This is a cool concept, so why is this off the list proper? Jack Frost is human. He's a serial killer who gets melted into goo by "chemicals", and merges with the snow. Also, he talks... this is what inspired my "no talking" rule, actually. I realized that most talking monsters were basically humans, with a gimmick.
ii. The Happening
The Monster: Angry Plants
The idea is simple, people start randomly killing themselves all over the globe, and nobody knows what is happening - Title Drop! And the twist is that the thing causing these suicides is plants. They evolved some toxin, with vague suggestions that it has to do with humans ruining the world or something...
Setting aside the fact that that's not how evolution, plants, suicide, or basically "anything" works, the idea of some suicide-triggering bio-toxin isn't unworkable as a concept. But, you have to do it right. To me, this is scary for the same reason suicide is scary, it's an alien concept to neurotypical people.
If you did your research, you could write a story that explores suicidality and self-mutilation, the emotions and reasoning associated, and perhaps explore actual treatments. Instead, this movie, and others like it that explore "suicide-triggering attacks" (I'm looking at you Bird Box) is so poorly written that the characters aren't suicidal, they're just "self-destruct zombies". Replace the suicide toxin with "deadly poison", and you don't change any of the emotional impact of the movie. So, interesting idea, but the movie was so bad that I had to take it off my list.
But that's enough of that, so let's get things going with...
The A.W.N.'s TOP 10 HORROR MOVIES ABOUT INHUMAN MONSTERS (10-6)
10. The Caller
The Monster: A Time-Warping Telephone
In my research, I tried looking up a killer phone, I'd heard of movies like Murder by Phone; One Missed Call or even The Black Phone, but none of these were inhuman monsters, they were either ghosts or regular serial killers (and the black phone isn't a villain, those ghosts try to help). But then I found The Caller. Mary, a divorcee trying to rebuild her life, moves into a new apartment, and finds a black rotary phone that she likes the look of. But, she starts recieving calls from this phone, from a strange woman who claims to live in her apartment. Although scared at first, Mary befriends the woman until she learns that she committed suicide several years ago, and the woman she's talking to is calling from the past, and her actions are changing the present. The more they talk, the more Mary learns how mentally unstable this woman is, as she keeps changing the past, even killing people.
It's a creepy idea. It's still low on this list because the main horror element is definitely the crazy woman in the past, but the main antagonist, and threat, is definitely this phone - a phone that calls itself from the past. The killer didn't create this phone, she doesn't even realize how it works at first, and without it she wouldn't be anywhere near as dangerous. But, I admit, this might be less horror and more "sci-fi adventure" if someone else had picked up the phone, which is the reason it's the lowest on the list.
9. Down / The Shaft
The Monster: A Cyborg-Enhanced Elevator
Elevators are already kind of scary, a claustrophobic box, moving up and down a massive shaft - if those cables snap, you'd plummet to the ground. Real elevators are very safe, but what if one was evil... a true "hellevator". In this movie (called "Down" in America, and "The Shaft" in Australia) a lightning strike causes the elevator of the Millenium building to start malfunctioning. The next day, an elevator traps several women inside, after freeing them the owner calls in elevator servicemen, main character Mark and his senior co-worker Jeff, but they see nothing wrong with it, so they leave. The next day, a blind man and his dog fall down the empty shaft and that night one of the security guards is decapitated after getting his head caught in the doors. Mark becomes obsessed with investigating, since the elevator seems to have a mind of its own. He pairs up with sensationalist tabloid writer Jennifer after she quote-mines him for an article, and they start investigating. Now, I'm going to spoil one of the twists here, so I hope you're ready for this, it's a doozy... the elevator company has been trying to cover up the cause of these murders, because they're responsible - the elevator was a secret experiment by one of the research scientists at the elevator company, who used one of his failed military experiments, a bio-chip. This chip that uses dolphin brain matter to create a densely-packed, powerful microchip. But, after the lightning strike, the elevator grew an entirely new brain, causing the elevator to literally have a mind of its own, and apparently its out for blood. That is insane, and kind of hilarious, but it also makes for an interesting movie. If this thing had a higher budget, it would be amazing. But, as it is, I had to put it low on the list.
8. The Mangler
The Monster: A Deified Laundry-Machine
I'm just going to warn you up-front, I looked at a whole lot of movies based on Stephen King stories for this list and quite a few even made it on. King seems to adore inhuman monsters, from vengeful trucks powered by alien radiation, to accursed hotels built on Indian burial grounds, all the way to the inevitable passing of time itself. These are some amazing stories... unfortunately, a lot of the movies are poorly done. I decided to focus on movies I enjoyed, and this one is pretty clever. This movie is based on one of King's short stories, and it's about an industrial-grade, old-fashioned linen press, called a mangle. After a series of industrial accidents, the mangle begins to act strangely, and it's revealed that some of these unusual accidents involving a young woman would have spilled "the blood of a virgin" into the machine, as part of a demonic ritual, awakening the monster. Unfortunately, this doesn't have the same horror ideas of the original short story, as they changed when the demon was first summoned, but I still enjoy this story.
Industrial factories and machinery are often inherently dangerous, and there's a huge risk of horrific accidents. It's been used in horror before, like the industrial accident that kills and horribly disfigures the corpse of Herbert in The Monkey's Paw; in the movie The Machinist, one character has an arm mangled in a machine and another has toes for fingers after losing them to a lathe & a lot of the more horrific traps in Saw are inspired by factory machinery. Industrial accidents are horrifying, and in this movie, the villain is an industrial accident incarnate. If that doesn't deserve a place on this list, I don't know what does.
7. In the Mouth of Madness
The Monster: Cursed Horror Novels
I'm not gonna lie, I love stories and books, so I was looking everywhere for some villainous books. I found some evil books, but none of them were actually villains - the Book of the Dead from Evil Dead; the pop-up children's book from The Babadook - these are all vectors for the actual monster to come out, they don't harm the reader directly. Then I found In the Mouth of Madness, a movie by John Carpenter about special investigator John Trent, who was hired by the publishers of world-infamous horror author Sutter Cane to retrieve his latest manuscript, the titular book "In the Mouth of Madness".
And the publishers are worried because they know they have a frantic readership willing to pay a lot of money, there have been riots outside of bookstores that ran out of pre-orders for the book, people are fanatical about these books. The idea here is that Sutter Cane writes cosmic horror, about alien creatures, otherworldly gods older than the universe and these books are driving people mad because his horror series is basically the Lovecraftian Bible, and the fanaticism and belief of his fandom is making these monsters stronger.
If you're wondering whether Sutter Cane himself is the human mind behind this, fear not - he's as much a puppet of these beasts as the rest of us, they're not his fiction so much as his revelation. But, I won't go into too much detail here because the movie is actually really good'; it's John Carpenter after all and there's a cool metafictional aspect as well. but the idea of books that drive you mad is genuinely an inhuman monster and I'm glad I found them to put on this list.
6. The Ruins
The Monster: Prehensile Parasitoidal Vines
There aren't many movies which have plants as a movie monster, and those that do often play it for laughs. Little Shop of Horrors is a comedy musical more than a sci-fi horror (and the original 1960 film was also horror comedy). And whilst I do like The Day of the Triffids, they're more aliens than plants and I was trying to avoid aliens for this list (although, admittedly, that might have made my job easier). Also, the triffids in the movie (and the original book they're based on) aren't really that scary. However, the monster in The Ruins is. A group of Americans are on vacation in New Mexico, and another tourist offers to take them to some secret ruins that are "off the map". The group gets to an ancient Mayan temple covered in vines, and they're taking photos when they're surrounded by several locals who shoot anyone who dares to step off the ziggurat.
In time, they discover why. The vines covering the temple aren't ordinary plants, they're aggressive, carnivorous and parasitic. If you get close, they slowly wrap their vines around you, absorbing you and slowly feeding off your nutrients. If you touch one of their thorns, it seeds tendrils under your skin that grow, feeding off your blood as they spread throughout your body. They're even shown to have limited intelligence, allowing them to lure in prey to be ensnared by vines, or infested by thorns.
This was not a popular movie, because people found it poorly written and excessively gory, but I think the plot is pretty good (it's apparently based on a book) and I think this did a great job at making something as docile and beautiful as a plant actually kind of scary.
- - -
Alright, this is taking way too long, and way too much effort, so I'm going to have to split this one in two. Come back tomorrow to see the rest of the list.
Until then, why not leave a comment about some of your favourite inhuman monsters from films, I'd love to learn about more. Can you guess which will be the top five of my last, particularly number one? (I honestly couldn't have - until I was reminded of it in my research, I'd actually forgotten about that movie). So, tell me about any of the inhuman monsters you know, especially the ones you've forgotten, and I'll see you in Part Two.
