31 October

This Guy’s Top 5 (Mostly) Original Movie Monsters

Written by This Guy

5. The Pale Man (Pan’s Labyrinth)

The Pale Man is certainly one of the creepiest movie monsters

Here’s a real creep to start with. Guillermo del Toro’s amazing creature work is at play here, when a young girl finds herself transported to a micro-world, containing a lovely buffet spread, and this hideous bastard. The Pale Man slumbers at the end of the table, until the girl steals a single bit of fruit from the spread. He then wakes up, puts his eyes in, and eats her two friends. According to del Toro, the Pale Man represents “institutional evil,” feeding on the less fortunate. Ultimately, he looks horrifying, and in his brief appearance in the film, becomes one of the great iconic new monsters of the 21st century.

4. Gwoemul (The Host)

Sea monsters in a Korean river is a terrifying thought

This Guy LOVES sea monsters. There’s just something so absolutely ancient and terrifying about the deep, darkness of the ocean, and what may lie hidden below its surface. Now, according to The Host, if you take a river in any industrialized city, and pour enough chemicals down the drain, you can have your very own river monster to play with! The creature here comes out of the river during after being pelted with cans and food by the locals. He terrorizes the townsfolk, before grabbing a little girl and returning to the depths. The monster here isn’t some super-intelligent otherworldly beast, or a supernatural entity. It’s just a hungry animal, looking to satisfy its belly. But the effects are great (especially considering the budget), and the design is both familiar and alien, but ultimately dangerous, a perfect representation of the dangers of anti-environmentalism.

3. Graboids (Tremors)

The Graboid, one of the great movie monsters

These big bastards are classic. What 90s kid didn’t go through childhood assuming the worms themselves were called “tremors?” It’s okay, you can admit it. These Graboids have supersonic, 6-foot tongues, and they move through the earth like a shark through water. If you’re on the ground, you’re not safe. It’s so hard to find original “creature features” nowadays, so Tremors is still a real benchmark for the modern monster film. Now to keep it that way, please ignore any rumours you might hear of sequels to this movie. And don’t ask what an “ass-blaster” is.

2. The Entity (It Follows)

Most monsters have a distinct look, but they're scarier when they could be anyone

Now, in terms of pure creepiness and terror, this one is probably This Guy’s favourite. The creature from It Follows is hard to define. Is it a monster? Is it a curse, a disease? Who knows? But, once you have it, your days are numbered. Passed through sex, the Entity finds the most recent “infected” and hunts them down with unstoppable determination and patience. Wherever you go, whatever you do, it is out there somewhere, walking right towards you. And when it finds you, the kill is sudden, brutal, and leaves a mess. It takes on the forms of other people to blend into crowds, and moves constantly towards its target. And once they are dead, it just moves on to the next. You can try to outrun it, but it never stops. Of all the monsters on this list, this one is by far the most heinous.

1. The Xenomorph (Alien)

One of the most classic original monsters, the Alien

Can’t really be much of a surprise here. Ridley Scott’s Alien, with creature designs by H.R. Giger, emains probably the most iconic, and intriguing original movie monster. This beast, a perfectly evolved killing machine. It’s “physical perfection is matched only by its hostility.” It is pure, unbridled survival instinct manifested in the ultimate monster. Just one of these things killed its way through an entire ship crew in less than a day. A swarm of them wiped out an entire squad of space marines. And that face. Tell me that is not the actual face of nightmares. The true meaning of terror.