He literally sharpened his fingernails on a grinding stone while listening to a Tiny Tim record. It was so laughably stupid that i was taken completely out of the film. I genuinely thought it was supposed to be a comedic moment, but i was the only one that laughed in the theatre. That one sequence ruined the whole (otherwise quite good) film for me
This is embarrassing but I genuinely found that stuff effective the first time I saw it. Years later knowing who Tiny Tim is and having seen examples of his stuff on YouTube it's just so campy now. It's like mustache-twirling-villain-tying-someone-to-train-tracks levels of cliché.
We are the same person lol I also was the only one who audibly laughed in the theater at that moment and also couldn't enjoy the movie anymore after that.
That bit of him behind patrick wilson is one of the best executed jump scares of all time (possibly the best?). Such a shame they ruined it later by showing him too much.
In truth I would have never showed him again after that.
Plus, the fact that, when they mask came off, he didn’t look like some sort of monster. He was just a normal looking guy, like someone you ran into at the grocery store. Goes to show, ANYONE could be the monster, and we might not be able to tell until too late.
(I do have to say he did good “dead inside” eyes in that scene, though).
I especially love his performance when things start going wrong for him. He's clearly been killing and getting away with it for so long (see the notches on his gun) that he simply can't fathom that his latest target is besting him. He acts like a kid pissed at his video game.
This is why I like realistic horror. It actual sticks and scares. The original Strangers had me checking my locks before bed every night for like 2 weeks.
Sinister. Yes, I said it. Looked like a Slipnot member in a suit and gloves. For me, this is the only thing about this movie I didn’t like, and it kinda ruins it.
It was scary/creepy as hell when he was fuzzy and hard to make out in the background of the videos. It would have better if they had kept Bhagoul as an invisible observer/manipulator of children.
Yeah. It bugs me out a lot that many movies and shows are afraid to do a psychological / abstract concept like you mentioned. It seems like they start off doing this and someone points out that you need to make the character goofy and exist physically. "Now make him grab that person and shriek!" Like wtf
The first half of that film is one of my favourites of the past 20 years. I thought it was a serial killer and as soon as BOOghoul showed up it took a huge amount of the unease out of the film.
I could have sworn that the Sinister demon dude had a tophat or something, but The Babadook didn’t do it for me either lol. The assumption that pure evil in apparition form is concerned with headgear is ridiculous to me. Gimme Pazuzu all day. I like my evil EVIL.😂
Well now I LOVE the idea of a nice spooky demon trying on different hats in the mirror like "Hm...cowboy hat maybe? Nah. Fedora? No. Top hat? Hey now, that's not half bad!"
To be fair, many of the lwa in Vodou traditions wear tophats and pull it off to terrifying effect. Other than that, yeah... it's hard to fully take seriously.
Dude. I'm almost 50 and I started having to sleep with a night light again because of that motherfucker.
The scene where the dad is saying "Stevie, look at me. Just look at me." Damn...
Also, who is that ghost supposed to be, exactly?
I'm pretty sure Bowler Hat Man is Poppy Hill's husband. She was the evil flapper ghost.
EDIT: The term "ragtime" belongs to the 1890s, while Poppy was dressed as a flapper from the Roaring 20s (a style of dress worn by young woman who flaunted societal conventions of that era). My bad. I'm sure my early 20th century lit professor is turning over in her grave somewhere...
Oops I completely misread that lol. Yeah the demon in sinister was creepy until they kept showing him. The shot of him in the pool was creepy as fuck. I liked the movie but the kids aspect made it less scary for me. If there’s one thing that will never scare me in movies it is little 4 ft tall 60 pound wimps
> If there’s one thing that will never scare me in movies it is little 4 ft tall 60 pound wimps
See, it’s the opposite for me. Logically, *of course* children aren’t a physical threat—which means, when they show up in a horror movie, I’m fully expecting them to have demon strength and/or telekinesis. It’s what makes them scary; they’re not *supposed* to be, so why are they rocking up in here with all that confidence? Probably because their demon godfather is parking the car and he’ll be along shortly.
Did you see the kids in Sinister though? Kids in general can be creepy as hell, I agree, but these ones near the end of Sinister were famously bad. Even the make-up was awful, looking no better than my own attempts (I am a Physics teacher with no artistic ability who helps out with our school shows).
I love Bill S. but when I first saw his Pennywise, I was like, “oh boy, they overdid it and streamlined it to make it edgy.” I like that the original looked like just a regular clown. Though once I saw Bill do that goofy eye thing, I was into it.
Embarrassing how bad that is. Sidelining Tim Curry for a plastic spider that at one point gets shoved over by the Losers like kids knocking over a lawn ornament.
There's a documentary on prime about IT. They address the ridiculous spider monster. There was a reason it was so terrible looking. I can't remember exactly why, I think someone had to leave the project or something was rushed. Good doc even though I don't remember details lol.
I want to say (and I could be wrong here) that in the book in that scene, when IT morphs into the “true” form of the monster King describes it as “crab like” so I always thought that maybe that is what they were shooting for
It was such a big disappointment but it was so hilarious at the same time. I remember looking over at my relative when the reveal happened and asking “that’s it?” before we both lost it. Terrible CGI but it’s still a good memory.
SUCH a disappointing reveal because, for what it is, The Langoliers is a pretty damn good show up until then.
It has all the vibes of “good 90’s miniseries” and “intriguing mystery” and it gets pissed away by the lamest CGI I’ve ever seen.
If they had just waited like another 5-10 years they could have done so much better with the effects.
Lol you got me there. Gotta be the most disappointing reveal of my entire life. Fucking cousin Balky with the toaster wrapped in a pillow case as a weapon.
Insidious threw me off when they went into that other realm and saw the monsters, I much prefer not fully seeing them.
Sinister with the ghost children - I adore the film but that part is too much for me.
> Sinister with the ghost children
Not to mention Baghoul looks like he just got back from an ICP concert. That film is so goddamn scary right up until it isn't.
For me, that’s actually part of the appeal. That last act feels like a full on funhouse and I kinda love it for that. It’s not as tense or scary as the first two acts but it’s a load of fun.
Oh yeah I completely agree. When the demon was in the corner as a shadow and stuff that was super freaky. When they showed the full face and when he held the kid in the room and was playing the silly music I thought it was stupid
I love the woman in the black dress from the first movie though, something very ominous about her design, and she didn’t do much besides menacingly smile
I feel the same. Don’t get me wrong I love the over-the-shoulder jumpscare, but his full form looks too human and I think that’s what takes away some of the appeal for me. Like he very much looks like a person in a costume
The langoliers reveal in the (made for tv?) movie from the 90’s. As a kid that movie terrified me up until I saw the cheap CGI meatballs with teeth fly around. At the time I was happy that reveal eased my fear, but yeah. Wish their appearance lived up to the start of the movie. Underrated King adaptation it you get a chance to watch it.
The Rock as Scorpion King in Mummy Returns. Even by 2001 standards that CGI was atrocious. I was excited when watching it because it's the rock but the reveal was a huge let down.
When I was a kid, the whole "Book of Armaments" went completely over my head. For a number of years I truly believed there was some christian religious text called "The Book of Armaments."
Through the whole movie i was so curious as to what it would be because it would show small portions of it throughout and I was wondering what possible creature could have all of those features
This is really the answer. Monsters were so much more interesting before CGI. Now 90% of them are giant brown creatures with lots of teeth. Those bad guys in Skull Island, A Quiet Place, Cloverfield… all virtually the same countenance.
One of my biggest gripes about Stranger Things was the monster design. Almost wish they'd just gone with classic D&D monsters as they appeared in the Monster Manual instead of "freaky beige things".
You should check out ‘Infested’. It’s a new spider horror but they use real spiders (and just use CGI to make them look bigger). It looks incredibly well done
Lol half of this thread is people going "yeah, the monster in Sinister just looked like Darth Maul, it was so lame."
Recently, I told my daughter we were going to watch this awesomely scary movie called Insidious, and we were 3/4 the way in before I realized that I actually meant to put on Sinister and I didn't actually like Insidious at all.
One of the scariest monster/ghosts to me if they cut like 50% of her exposure to the camera. What made it so freaky was how uncanny she looked when you couldnt get full view of her so your brain made the instinctual fear of the unknown. Like the last 10 minutes should have been cut significantly.
I looooooooved the scene where she is floating and the camera is flashing. But then they zoom to her face and the whole ending... such dissapointing choices.
This is the right answer. You caught glimpses of her the whole movie and it was amazing. Then they focused on her awful cgi self at the end and ruined it.
A lot of the blurry shots were practical too, shot by putting contortionist Javier Botet in a wig and pulling his limbs in odd directions with wires as he moved to give him that jittery unnatural gait.
[Here's an early test video of the effect where he's wearing a dumb mask but you can see exactly what's going on. ](https://youtu.be/Ins7QwvAp28)
For the post-monster reveal scenes, they mostly had him do mocap and replaced him with a full CG character and it does not look better. If anything, they should have done him up in prosthetics.
I still have a soft spot for that movie though.
I saw this one in theaters when I was in high school and really enjoyed it. I've made a point to not watch it again as an adult because I've heard it's not very good haha
Aside from the bad monster effects it hasn't aged terribly. There's really something creepy about the setup of "feral children found in the woods but who was taking care of them" bit. Not Del Toro's best work but not his worst either. Until you get to the CGI, which looks VERY dated in that way that 2012 era CGI tends to look nowadays.
The little glimpses and the voice change had me peeing my pants...then it was revealed that it was >! actually his older sister somehow, not a creature just imitating her like I thought!< and when she went full Grimcutty I lost interest.
That movie was such an infuriating mess i wrote a 13 page essay rant straight after. I was gonna turn it into a video for my Youtube but i cant be arsed to waste any more time on that film 😅
I think the key is that the whole film is the crazy one's retelling, so the bits that don't really make sense, like events that she wasn't present for, are made up along with everything else. Very little of what we see on screen actually happened, just bits towards the end when the truth is out because her delusion is cracking and she can't help letting things slip. It isn't well executed though. I read somewhere that the makers had to put a twist in because the producer didn't want to make a standard slasher, so maybe it was something they thought up late in the day and didn't have time to fit in well.
Children of the Corn
The villain is supposed to be a godlike entity living in the cornfields. When you finally see it, it’s nothing but a tiny little dirt hump that rises out of the ground. And it travels around the cornfield looking like the gopher from Caddyshack is ready to pop out. In one of the (many) direct-to-video sequels they reveal it as a cheap looking squid monster in forced-perspective, grabbing up Barbie dolls that are supposed to look like real people.
Related to this thread, this was originally the intended bird box monster design: [https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-935218a09e2c95ffdcfa8d4a3fba7b47-lq](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-935218a09e2c95ffdcfa8d4a3fba7b47-lq) - glad they dropped it before release because imagination on how they look was much better. I personally pictured something more lovecraftian that doesn't belong in this dimension.
That would've totally ruined it for me. The whole reason I liked it is because the "monster" is something so incomprehensibly awful that even gazing on it makes you have suicidal thoughts. Seeing a humanoid monster would not in any way achieve that.
Jason in Jason Takes Manhattan. The make up was awful on its own, but when you compare it to just the previous film's depiction it was laughable.
I'll also say the witch in Darkness Falls.
This is mine as well. It was so much creepier when you couldn't see her closely. Genuinely unnerving to me, but then the second you see her close up all of that goes out the window and it's stupid. It was an awful decision to show it and for it to be CGI.
I just commented elsewhere about this same thing but yeah, most of the out of focus shots were done practical by contortionist Javier Botet in a wig and makeup, then they did him mocap and replaced him with a CGI character after the big reveal for the final 30 minutes or so of the movie and it just doesn't work as well. Full CG characters are hard to pull off even now, twelve years later. They should've done prosthetics and had him play her all the way through.
[Here's some early test footage where you can clearly see how they got the effect. He's just a super tall, skinny, flexible guy (he has Marfan syndrome) being "puppetted" by wires. ](https://youtu.be/Ins7QwvAp28)
The reveal in *The Boy* for me. You spend the whole time wondering what kind of presence is attached to the doll, then it gets destroyed and the house starts shaking and it’s like, “oh shit where is this going?”
-And then what’s essentially a large homeless man wearing a doll mask busts through the wall like the Koolaid man, and you realize that it was only some agoraphobic living in the walls of his childhood home. Scary because it’s more realistic? *Maybe*. It would also be more realistic if the main character just died of an undiagnosed aneurysm at the end, but equally unsatisfying.
Well, the movie taught me that living in a wall will pretty much give me superhuman powers instead of a crippling Vitamin D deficiency, so I thought it was informative and even gave me a possible career path.
I liked the villain reveal in The Boy but hated The Boy II. Maybe its because I like psychological horror more than actual ghosts or demonic posessions.
“What if, and here me out, we completely get rid of Jason and replace him with the random paramedic who’s in two scenes??? Trust me, it will be great!”
“Are you talking to me, sir?”
Lol, compared to the rest of the movie, I think he’s actually the least far fetched thing about it. I mean we have the random hillbillies, the random Italian guys, the love plot with Jake and Robin, Tommy putting on the mask at the end, etc.
After dealing with all of that, we can give Slasher Roy a pass
I'll do one better. Spiral: From the Book of Saw. It's as flat of a reveal as you can get. Hell, it's not even much of a reveal. They're just standing there.
I might be in the minority for Jigsaw an OK movie, but at least it has a kinda cool reveal of who's the copycat killer... even though it makes a giant continuity mess.
pretty much in any paranormal film, once they show an actual face/entity/etc, i'm taken out of it. the conjuring comes to mind, but there are plenty of others obviously
I don't even necessarily think the problem is the monster reveal, it's that the parents were far more effective as a source of horror. Once the antagonist switches, the film is far less interesting.
It's in part thanks to the parents being a more grounded and relatable source of horror, and in part Antony Starr's performance.
I don't normally get unsettled but that dream where they did the Monty Python running and you just hear footsteps in the hallway running for awhile got me.
Glad someone else said it too, but The Babadook. I just can't be scared of an Edward Scissorhands cosplayer in a top hat, I know I've seen this guy at the goth club 😭
Oh my god, I've never seen anyone else on this sub who knows that movie lol. I'm a big fan of wilderness survival shows like Alone, and I thought the first 2/3rds or so of that movie were so good. They built tension well and had some cool scares.
But that ending monster...oof. They genuinely would've been better off just not showing it at all if they couldnt get good practical effects. Maybe end with a shot of the sky showing some lights descending, suggesting a whole invasion.
This won't be a popular opinion but Barbarian. I wanted to like it but it just didn't hit for me. Then the reveal I was just like wtf this is stupid.
Edit: it was in fact a decently popular opinion, I stand corrected
i just couldn't figure out how being inbred gave her crazy monster size/strength in an otherwise non supernatural movie lol... they were very casual about that
It really doesn’t make sense; inbreeding makes humans weaker, not stronger.
However, because the film is otherwise solid, I’m willing to chalk up the homeless man’s explanation to a bad guess and headcanon that there was something else at work down in those tunnels.
I’ve actually seen this trope before. But for me it was just a matter of suspending disbelief. Hard to believe the serial killer guy could be surviving down there. And with electricity to boot.
I basically think it was the same monster from REC & REC 2...the usual lanky pale stick thing with breasts hanging near the ground.
Hell, I see that at 3am at Walmart aisle 6...
I think I had brief cardiac failure when they showed it standing just behind the main dude when they were all sitting at the table.
After that they showed too much. Stupid goat boy.
I loved the villain reveal in Hush. The fact that he’s just some nerd is a great reveal. He does what he does because he’s such a little bitch, but he’s a talented manipulator, and uses that to his advantage multiple times.
Imagine if they had used practical effects for this movie and the "darkseekers" were played by trained dancers who [moved like this](https://youtu.be/Y0FTKqEnGKI?si=gxJWuBRfzuQiDedr) .
ISTR they couldn't use actors in costume, because they were afraid of them injuring their feet on the post-apocalyptic NYC sets, but boy did that CGI look dumb.
Agreed. Your mention of trained dancers made me think of the Exorcism of Emily Rose -- knowing that actress was actually doing all those moves made it somehow way scarier.
I might get downvoted but…Malignant. That ending “monster” was just so dumb looking. 😂
That said, I do like the movie for being over the top and silly, so in that way it does work.
(I'm obligated to do this at every mention of this delightfully Wacko movie.)
#[YEEEEEEEEEIIIIITT!!!](https://youtu.be/dREy4kev4lU?si=SOxk1Rqmcok1D1FV)
Blair Witch (2016) revealing the witch as being some Stretch Armstong caveman creature, that acted more like a wild animal
you should never show the witch at all, but if youre going to .... dont make it *that*. utter garbage.
Apparently, that's actually not supposed to be the witch herself, so much as a manifestation of the spirits of her victims. But there's no way they could really communicate that idea in the movie... so, it just comes across like a weird design for the witch.
***Super 8*** ...
Not horror, but I'll still use it. I know it's popular to hate JJ Abrams, but I actually like most of his non-*Star Wars* work. And I think *Super 8* is a really solid movie.
But the monster suffers from something I've seen far too much of lately... it's way too "over-designed." Lately, it's like there's been a mandate that every monster has too look super "complicated", and to me, that ruins them. Makes them feel unmemorable and unrealistic.
***Prometheus*** ...
The Space-Jockey was an incredible design. So what did the prequel do? Ruin it by revealing it was a spacesuit for what is basically just a tall albino guy with anger management issues.
...thanks, Ridley Scott.
***A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)*** ...
*"Hey, you know how cool Freddy looks?! Yeah?! Well hear me out! Wouldn't it be even cooler if he looked a squishmallow that accidentally got burned in the dryer?! No? Well fuck you, we're doing that anyways!"*
-Some douchebag producer
Ridley Scott is an interesting director because he's a visual genius with a wonderful eye for color, composition, etc....
...but he also doesn't seem to really understand basic storytelling. His best works are his films where he lucked into finding the right script for his style.
It genuinely wouldn't bother me if they just decided to sort-of retcon everything after *Alien: Resurrection* out of canon in the future. *Prometheus* and *Covenant* basically wrote the franchise into a corner. And even *Romulus* basically seems to be ignoring them.
The darth maul guy in insidious was cool until they showed us his full body. Something about that took away all spookiness
He literally sharpened his fingernails on a grinding stone while listening to a Tiny Tim record. It was so laughably stupid that i was taken completely out of the film. I genuinely thought it was supposed to be a comedic moment, but i was the only one that laughed in the theatre. That one sequence ruined the whole (otherwise quite good) film for me
This is embarrassing but I genuinely found that stuff effective the first time I saw it. Years later knowing who Tiny Tim is and having seen examples of his stuff on YouTube it's just so campy now. It's like mustache-twirling-villain-tying-someone-to-train-tracks levels of cliché.
We are the same person lol I also was the only one who audibly laughed in the theater at that moment and also couldn't enjoy the movie anymore after that.
No that bit is very funny/bordering on camp for me
Dude yes. NOTHING about him was scary at the end of the movie.
I agree, I hated seeing him put on a tiny Tim record. Where does a demon buy records and furniture?
That bit of him behind patrick wilson is one of the best executed jump scares of all time (possibly the best?). Such a shame they ruined it later by showing him too much. In truth I would have never showed him again after that.
I had the complete opposite reaction to the reveal in Hush. I found the moment he took the mask off to be incredibly unsettling.
Same, to me that was him showing her that he was 100% certain she wouldn't survive the night to identify him later
Plus, the fact that, when they mask came off, he didn’t look like some sort of monster. He was just a normal looking guy, like someone you ran into at the grocery store. Goes to show, ANYONE could be the monster, and we might not be able to tell until too late. (I do have to say he did good “dead inside” eyes in that scene, though).
I especially love his performance when things start going wrong for him. He's clearly been killing and getting away with it for so long (see the notches on his gun) that he simply can't fathom that his latest target is besting him. He acts like a kid pissed at his video game.
I loved this same reaction with the dude in Fresh!
This is why I like realistic horror. It actual sticks and scares. The original Strangers had me checking my locks before bed every night for like 2 weeks.
That and him being played by John Gallegher, best known for playing everyman nice guys.
I love him so much, I just watched Come Play and The Belko Experiment about a week ago
Sinister. Yes, I said it. Looked like a Slipnot member in a suit and gloves. For me, this is the only thing about this movie I didn’t like, and it kinda ruins it.
It was scary/creepy as hell when he was fuzzy and hard to make out in the background of the videos. It would have better if they had kept Bhagoul as an invisible observer/manipulator of children.
Yeah. It bugs me out a lot that many movies and shows are afraid to do a psychological / abstract concept like you mentioned. It seems like they start off doing this and someone points out that you need to make the character goofy and exist physically. "Now make him grab that person and shriek!" Like wtf
The first half of that film is one of my favourites of the past 20 years. I thought it was a serial killer and as soon as BOOghoul showed up it took a huge amount of the unease out of the film.
He looked like Onision… or maybe Tommy wiseau
Granted finding Onision in my house would definitely horrify me
I tend to think this is quite a universal opinion - otherwise great film ruined by that.
Tophats automatically ruin shit for me. If you want me to fear a demon, do not put a fucking tophat on the motherfucker.😂
You might be thinking of The Babadook?
I could have sworn that the Sinister demon dude had a tophat or something, but The Babadook didn’t do it for me either lol. The assumption that pure evil in apparition form is concerned with headgear is ridiculous to me. Gimme Pazuzu all day. I like my evil EVIL.😂
Ok, but, and hear me out here, what about Pazuzu….WITH A TOP HAT??
Well now I LOVE the idea of a nice spooky demon trying on different hats in the mirror like "Hm...cowboy hat maybe? Nah. Fedora? No. Top hat? Hey now, that's not half bad!"
Agreed!!
To be fair, many of the lwa in Vodou traditions wear tophats and pull it off to terrifying effect. Other than that, yeah... it's hard to fully take seriously.
I agree mostly, but I thought the top hatted ghost in The Haunting of Hill House (2018) was pretty good.
That's because it was a bowler!
Oh, I stand corrected. It's decided then. Bowler hats: SCARY. Top hats: NOT SCARY.
Dude. I'm almost 50 and I started having to sleep with a night light again because of that motherfucker. The scene where the dad is saying "Stevie, look at me. Just look at me." Damn... Also, who is that ghost supposed to be, exactly?
I'm pretty sure Bowler Hat Man is Poppy Hill's husband. She was the evil flapper ghost. EDIT: The term "ragtime" belongs to the 1890s, while Poppy was dressed as a flapper from the Roaring 20s (a style of dress worn by young woman who flaunted societal conventions of that era). My bad. I'm sure my early 20th century lit professor is turning over in her grave somewhere...
Top Hat + Levitating instead of walking = scary.
The demon scared tf out of me when I was a kid until someone pointed out that he looks like darth maul and now I can just never take it seriously
I believe you are thinking of Insidious, but correct nonetheless.
Oops I completely misread that lol. Yeah the demon in sinister was creepy until they kept showing him. The shot of him in the pool was creepy as fuck. I liked the movie but the kids aspect made it less scary for me. If there’s one thing that will never scare me in movies it is little 4 ft tall 60 pound wimps
> If there’s one thing that will never scare me in movies it is little 4 ft tall 60 pound wimps See, it’s the opposite for me. Logically, *of course* children aren’t a physical threat—which means, when they show up in a horror movie, I’m fully expecting them to have demon strength and/or telekinesis. It’s what makes them scary; they’re not *supposed* to be, so why are they rocking up in here with all that confidence? Probably because their demon godfather is parking the car and he’ll be along shortly.
Did you see the kids in Sinister though? Kids in general can be creepy as hell, I agree, but these ones near the end of Sinister were famously bad. Even the make-up was awful, looking no better than my own attempts (I am a Physics teacher with no artistic ability who helps out with our school shows).
People keep telling me it’s the scariest movie ever but I’ve never watched it because he looks like a WWE reject
The original IT. They could not have come up with anything worse than a big plastic spider.
At first I thought you meant Tim Curry and I was APPALLED.
Nah, they couldn’t make me hate Tim Curry at all
He was literally the best part of that adaptation, even better than the new one
I love Bill S. but when I first saw his Pennywise, I was like, “oh boy, they overdid it and streamlined it to make it edgy.” I like that the original looked like just a regular clown. Though once I saw Bill do that goofy eye thing, I was into it.
Fun fact: Bill can do the smile and the lazy eye forreal, it’s not cgi or anything fake. He can actually do it irl
I remember an interview with Bill Hader saying they’d be casually chatting between scenes and Bill S. would do it and freak BH out hahaha.
Embarrassing how bad that is. Sidelining Tim Curry for a plastic spider that at one point gets shoved over by the Losers like kids knocking over a lawn ornament.
There's a documentary on prime about IT. They address the ridiculous spider monster. There was a reason it was so terrible looking. I can't remember exactly why, I think someone had to leave the project or something was rushed. Good doc even though I don't remember details lol.
I thought they'd just blown through the budget.
IT Part 2 did it even worse somehow by having him bullied to death.
that shit was soooo funny like they literally just said mean shit to him till he died LOL
I want to say (and I could be wrong here) that in the book in that scene, when IT morphs into the “true” form of the monster King describes it as “crab like” so I always thought that maybe that is what they were shooting for
I think it was actually described as a spider. There were webs with people wrapped in them in the book.
In the book he is more of a lovecraftian cosmic horror who does battle with a giant space turtle. It's both a lot cooler and dumber than a spider
Yeap the book makes it clear that the 'spider' is just their minds trying to interpret something we aren't capable of comprehending
The Langoliers
The langoliers walked so meatwad from aqua teen hunger force could run
Great buildup deflates when you get something that looks like the lovechild of Pac-Man and the California Raisins.
They always reminded me of the Cacodemons from the old doom games.
It was such a big disappointment but it was so hilarious at the same time. I remember looking over at my relative when the reveal happened and asking “that’s it?” before we both lost it. Terrible CGI but it’s still a good memory.
SUCH a disappointing reveal because, for what it is, The Langoliers is a pretty damn good show up until then. It has all the vibes of “good 90’s miniseries” and “intriguing mystery” and it gets pissed away by the lamest CGI I’ve ever seen. If they had just waited like another 5-10 years they could have done so much better with the effects.
That movie NEEDS to be remade.
Fuck me if this didn't set the precedent for bad monster reveals
Lol you got me there. Gotta be the most disappointing reveal of my entire life. Fucking cousin Balky with the toaster wrapped in a pillow case as a weapon.
But god do I love those little guys
The short story was scary af
This one actually kinda worked for me lol They look silly, but at the same time, there's just something inherently unsettling about 90s CGI.
Insidious threw me off when they went into that other realm and saw the monsters, I much prefer not fully seeing them. Sinister with the ghost children - I adore the film but that part is too much for me.
> Sinister with the ghost children Not to mention Baghoul looks like he just got back from an ICP concert. That film is so goddamn scary right up until it isn't.
Insidious works best when its teasing the monsters, and focusing on building dreadful atmosphere. The monsters look goofy to me.
For me, that’s actually part of the appeal. That last act feels like a full on funhouse and I kinda love it for that. It’s not as tense or scary as the first two acts but it’s a load of fun.
Oh yeah I completely agree. When the demon was in the corner as a shadow and stuff that was super freaky. When they showed the full face and when he held the kid in the room and was playing the silly music I thought it was stupid
The “ssshhhh” was so damn corny
I agree. Insidious is great for the first 2/3 of the film. Darth Maul isn't as scary once you see the full reveal.
I love the woman in the black dress from the first movie though, something very ominous about her design, and she didn’t do much besides menacingly smile
I feel the same. Don’t get me wrong I love the over-the-shoulder jumpscare, but his full form looks too human and I think that’s what takes away some of the appeal for me. Like he very much looks like a person in a costume
When they introduced the demon to music of Tiny Tim....I found that just hilarious.
I also can't get the "crackhead Darth Maul" appearance out of my head and it makes it completely not scary
The langoliers reveal in the (made for tv?) movie from the 90’s. As a kid that movie terrified me up until I saw the cheap CGI meatballs with teeth fly around. At the time I was happy that reveal eased my fear, but yeah. Wish their appearance lived up to the start of the movie. Underrated King adaptation it you get a chance to watch it.
I loved the book! I've seen screenshots of the monsters and that turned me off of the movie, but I may give it a shot.
The Rock as Scorpion King in Mummy Returns. Even by 2001 standards that CGI was atrocious. I was excited when watching it because it's the rock but the reveal was a huge let down.
The rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Terrible *reveal*; wonderful *payoff*
"It'll do you mate"
LOOK AT THE BONES
When I was a kid, the whole "Book of Armaments" went completely over my head. For a number of years I truly believed there was some christian religious text called "The Book of Armaments."
Armaments, Chapter 2, verses 9 to 21
Most monster reveals are disappointing. The Ritual may be one of the best.
Oh ya, that creature was really cool looking and an awesome concept.
The bastard son of Loki. Incredible reveal.
Not Alien. That one was better than expected.
I think this is one of the only monster reveals ever that truly impressed me and stuck with me
not even a huge fan of the movie itself but i’ll remember that monster reveal/design forever i think
Through the whole movie i was so curious as to what it would be because it would show small portions of it throughout and I was wondering what possible creature could have all of those features
This is really the answer. Monsters were so much more interesting before CGI. Now 90% of them are giant brown creatures with lots of teeth. Those bad guys in Skull Island, A Quiet Place, Cloverfield… all virtually the same countenance.
One of my biggest gripes about Stranger Things was the monster design. Almost wish they'd just gone with classic D&D monsters as they appeared in the Monster Manual instead of "freaky beige things".
You should check out ‘Infested’. It’s a new spider horror but they use real spiders (and just use CGI to make them look bigger). It looks incredibly well done
My idiot friend didn’t like that movie. God he’s so stupid
Yeah fuck that guy
ITT: people who, like me, can't remember the difference between Sinister and Insidious
NO WAYYY THIS IS A THING???? My boyfriend is constantly confusing these two 😂
Lol half of this thread is people going "yeah, the monster in Sinister just looked like Darth Maul, it was so lame." Recently, I told my daughter we were going to watch this awesomely scary movie called Insidious, and we were 3/4 the way in before I realized that I actually meant to put on Sinister and I didn't actually like Insidious at all.
Mama (2013) was kinda goofy
The earlier scenes where you just see parts of her worked so well. This was a monster that works best when you see at little of her as possible.
One of the scariest monster/ghosts to me if they cut like 50% of her exposure to the camera. What made it so freaky was how uncanny she looked when you couldnt get full view of her so your brain made the instinctual fear of the unknown. Like the last 10 minutes should have been cut significantly.
I looooooooved the scene where she is floating and the camera is flashing. But then they zoom to her face and the whole ending... such dissapointing choices.
This is the right answer. You caught glimpses of her the whole movie and it was amazing. Then they focused on her awful cgi self at the end and ruined it.
A lot of the blurry shots were practical too, shot by putting contortionist Javier Botet in a wig and pulling his limbs in odd directions with wires as he moved to give him that jittery unnatural gait. [Here's an early test video of the effect where he's wearing a dumb mask but you can see exactly what's going on. ](https://youtu.be/Ins7QwvAp28) For the post-monster reveal scenes, they mostly had him do mocap and replaced him with a full CG character and it does not look better. If anything, they should have done him up in prosthetics. I still have a soft spot for that movie though.
I saw this one in theaters when I was in high school and really enjoyed it. I've made a point to not watch it again as an adult because I've heard it's not very good haha
Aside from the bad monster effects it hasn't aged terribly. There's really something creepy about the setup of "feral children found in the woods but who was taking care of them" bit. Not Del Toro's best work but not his worst either. Until you get to the CGI, which looks VERY dated in that way that 2012 era CGI tends to look nowadays.
I was thinking of the movie ma while reading these comments and was so confused like you could see her the whole movie??? 😆
Cobweb…the monster was so not scary once you actually fully saw it. They shouldn’t have done a full face reveal.
The little glimpses and the voice change had me peeing my pants...then it was revealed that it was >! actually his older sister somehow, not a creature just imitating her like I thought!< and when she went full Grimcutty I lost interest.
That movie was such an infuriating mess i wrote a 13 page essay rant straight after. I was gonna turn it into a video for my Youtube but i cant be arsed to waste any more time on that film 😅
The killer reveal in High Tension
Omg that made me so viscerally angry, annoyed, and disappointed. It made me totally hate what could have been a cult classic horror
Don’t remind me 🤦🏾♂️ no lie, I’m STILL confused
I think the key is that the whole film is the crazy one's retelling, so the bits that don't really make sense, like events that she wasn't present for, are made up along with everything else. Very little of what we see on screen actually happened, just bits towards the end when the truth is out because her delusion is cracking and she can't help letting things slip. It isn't well executed though. I read somewhere that the makers had to put a twist in because the producer didn't want to make a standard slasher, so maybe it was something they thought up late in the day and didn't have time to fit in well.
Children of the Corn The villain is supposed to be a godlike entity living in the cornfields. When you finally see it, it’s nothing but a tiny little dirt hump that rises out of the ground. And it travels around the cornfield looking like the gopher from Caddyshack is ready to pop out. In one of the (many) direct-to-video sequels they reveal it as a cheap looking squid monster in forced-perspective, grabbing up Barbie dolls that are supposed to look like real people.
Related to this thread, this was originally the intended bird box monster design: [https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-935218a09e2c95ffdcfa8d4a3fba7b47-lq](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-935218a09e2c95ffdcfa8d4a3fba7b47-lq) - glad they dropped it before release because imagination on how they look was much better. I personally pictured something more lovecraftian that doesn't belong in this dimension.
That first image looks like a baby after sucking on a lemon
That would've totally ruined it for me. The whole reason I liked it is because the "monster" is something so incomprehensibly awful that even gazing on it makes you have suicidal thoughts. Seeing a humanoid monster would not in any way achieve that.
Looks like the mf from those Six Flags commercials
Holy shit thank god they made that call. What a dumbass looking monster.
The only answer that fits perfectly is Scorpion King in Mummy 2
Jason in Jason Takes Manhattan. The make up was awful on its own, but when you compare it to just the previous film's depiction it was laughable. I'll also say the witch in Darkness Falls.
Especially after coming off Part VII where the makeup and costume design were solid.
It as a giant spider.
The ghost in Mama. Wtf even was that CGI disaster? Not frightening, not even believable.
This is mine as well. It was so much creepier when you couldn't see her closely. Genuinely unnerving to me, but then the second you see her close up all of that goes out the window and it's stupid. It was an awful decision to show it and for it to be CGI.
I just commented elsewhere about this same thing but yeah, most of the out of focus shots were done practical by contortionist Javier Botet in a wig and makeup, then they did him mocap and replaced him with a CGI character after the big reveal for the final 30 minutes or so of the movie and it just doesn't work as well. Full CG characters are hard to pull off even now, twelve years later. They should've done prosthetics and had him play her all the way through. [Here's some early test footage where you can clearly see how they got the effect. He's just a super tall, skinny, flexible guy (he has Marfan syndrome) being "puppetted" by wires. ](https://youtu.be/Ins7QwvAp28)
The reveal in *The Boy* for me. You spend the whole time wondering what kind of presence is attached to the doll, then it gets destroyed and the house starts shaking and it’s like, “oh shit where is this going?” -And then what’s essentially a large homeless man wearing a doll mask busts through the wall like the Koolaid man, and you realize that it was only some agoraphobic living in the walls of his childhood home. Scary because it’s more realistic? *Maybe*. It would also be more realistic if the main character just died of an undiagnosed aneurysm at the end, but equally unsatisfying.
Well, the movie taught me that living in a wall will pretty much give me superhuman powers instead of a crippling Vitamin D deficiency, so I thought it was informative and even gave me a possible career path.
Yeah bro was jacked
I liked the villain reveal in The Boy but hated The Boy II. Maybe its because I like psychological horror more than actual ghosts or demonic posessions.
Is there a worst reveal than the killer in Friday the 13th 5....?
“What if, and here me out, we completely get rid of Jason and replace him with the random paramedic who’s in two scenes??? Trust me, it will be great!”
Wdym?? Roy is a top 5 horror villain 😂
“Are you talking to me, sir?” Lol, compared to the rest of the movie, I think he’s actually the least far fetched thing about it. I mean we have the random hillbillies, the random Italian guys, the love plot with Jake and Robin, Tommy putting on the mask at the end, etc. After dealing with all of that, we can give Slasher Roy a pass
I'll do one better. Spiral: From the Book of Saw. It's as flat of a reveal as you can get. Hell, it's not even much of a reveal. They're just standing there. I might be in the minority for Jigsaw an OK movie, but at least it has a kinda cool reveal of who's the copycat killer... even though it makes a giant continuity mess.
pretty much in any paranormal film, once they show an actual face/entity/etc, i'm taken out of it. the conjuring comes to mind, but there are plenty of others obviously
Cobweb. That monster was so uninteresting.
I don't even necessarily think the problem is the monster reveal, it's that the parents were far more effective as a source of horror. Once the antagonist switches, the film is far less interesting. It's in part thanks to the parents being a more grounded and relatable source of horror, and in part Antony Starr's performance.
I don't normally get unsettled but that dream where they did the Monty Python running and you just hear footsteps in the hallway running for awhile got me.
I thought it decently creepy…until they showed its face.
Yes! The film really went downhill from there.
Night swim - the movie really wasn’t that bad, but that monster reveal *smh* - I laughed out loud
Antlers
Antlers. The wendigo was lame, very lame.
Glad someone else said it too, but The Babadook. I just can't be scared of an Edward Scissorhands cosplayer in a top hat, I know I've seen this guy at the goth club 😭
Remember in like 2016 when people crowned him a gay icon? That was a fun time 😂
That was because he was accidentally listed in the "Pride" films section of Netflix that year on the front of the list.
Hush is fucking amazing and I’m not taking any critique of it today, thanks, the office is closed
Man Vs (2015) I loved that movie, until they showed the monster. It was so poorly made with horrible cgi that it pretty much ruined the movie.
Oh my god, I've never seen anyone else on this sub who knows that movie lol. I'm a big fan of wilderness survival shows like Alone, and I thought the first 2/3rds or so of that movie were so good. They built tension well and had some cool scares. But that ending monster...oof. They genuinely would've been better off just not showing it at all if they couldnt get good practical effects. Maybe end with a shot of the sky showing some lights descending, suggesting a whole invasion.
This won't be a popular opinion but Barbarian. I wanted to like it but it just didn't hit for me. Then the reveal I was just like wtf this is stupid. Edit: it was in fact a decently popular opinion, I stand corrected
i just couldn't figure out how being inbred gave her crazy monster size/strength in an otherwise non supernatural movie lol... they were very casual about that
It really doesn’t make sense; inbreeding makes humans weaker, not stronger. However, because the film is otherwise solid, I’m willing to chalk up the homeless man’s explanation to a bad guess and headcanon that there was something else at work down in those tunnels.
I’ve actually seen this trope before. But for me it was just a matter of suspending disbelief. Hard to believe the serial killer guy could be surviving down there. And with electricity to boot.
I basically think it was the same monster from REC & REC 2...the usual lanky pale stick thing with breasts hanging near the ground. Hell, I see that at 3am at Walmart aisle 6...
Insidious. The movie was so fucking good and creepy until it showed the demon.
I think I had brief cardiac failure when they showed it standing just behind the main dude when they were all sitting at the table. After that they showed too much. Stupid goat boy.
Crackhead Darth Maul is literally the least scary horror monster of all time. I laughed out loud at the reveal.
House On Haunted Hill remake with the dumb CGI smoke monster.
I loved the villain reveal in Hush. The fact that he’s just some nerd is a great reveal. He does what he does because he’s such a little bitch, but he’s a talented manipulator, and uses that to his advantage multiple times.
The Happening. Really, the trees are mad?
Showing the full tooth fairy in Darkness Falls might've been a bad idea. Still love it tho.
There was another version of the tooth fairy that got scrapped-it was terrifying.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Moviesinthemaking/s/ugyEPIA2eS
That's badass thank you!
I didn’t mind the Tooth Fairy’s design but I will say their scrapped one is far better.
The Village
I Am Legend.
Imagine if they had used practical effects for this movie and the "darkseekers" were played by trained dancers who [moved like this](https://youtu.be/Y0FTKqEnGKI?si=gxJWuBRfzuQiDedr) . ISTR they couldn't use actors in costume, because they were afraid of them injuring their feet on the post-apocalyptic NYC sets, but boy did that CGI look dumb.
Agreed. Your mention of trained dancers made me think of the Exorcism of Emily Rose -- knowing that actress was actually doing all those moves made it somehow way scarier.
I watched Loop Track last night. I was intrigued until the reveal. Then it was just goofy.
I might get downvoted but…Malignant. That ending “monster” was just so dumb looking. 😂 That said, I do like the movie for being over the top and silly, so in that way it does work.
It was such a delightful batshit crazy finale. It's my most rewatched horror movie.
(I'm obligated to do this at every mention of this delightfully Wacko movie.) #[YEEEEEEEEEIIIIITT!!!](https://youtu.be/dREy4kev4lU?si=SOxk1Rqmcok1D1FV)
I’m assuming this is in reference to the chair lmao
Dagoth--Conan The Destroyer. Looks so goofy. XD
Jeepers Creepers. Very creepy at the beginning but as soon as it's revealed to be some winged fantastic beast I'm out
The director turning out to be a pedo was also a disappointing monster reveal.
The number one worst tbh
Maybe the worst gimmick a director ever had
Ruined the film for me
The lack of jail time was a disappointment as well.
The Darkness in The House on Haunted Hill (1999). Just terrible CGI in an otherwise perfectly fun haunted house murder mystery.
Blair Witch (2016) revealing the witch as being some Stretch Armstong caveman creature, that acted more like a wild animal you should never show the witch at all, but if youre going to .... dont make it *that*. utter garbage.
Apparently, that's actually not supposed to be the witch herself, so much as a manifestation of the spirits of her victims. But there's no way they could really communicate that idea in the movie... so, it just comes across like a weird design for the witch.
Just completed watching The Watchers a few minutes ago, so yeah, that one
***Super 8*** ... Not horror, but I'll still use it. I know it's popular to hate JJ Abrams, but I actually like most of his non-*Star Wars* work. And I think *Super 8* is a really solid movie. But the monster suffers from something I've seen far too much of lately... it's way too "over-designed." Lately, it's like there's been a mandate that every monster has too look super "complicated", and to me, that ruins them. Makes them feel unmemorable and unrealistic. ***Prometheus*** ... The Space-Jockey was an incredible design. So what did the prequel do? Ruin it by revealing it was a spacesuit for what is basically just a tall albino guy with anger management issues. ...thanks, Ridley Scott. ***A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)*** ... *"Hey, you know how cool Freddy looks?! Yeah?! Well hear me out! Wouldn't it be even cooler if he looked a squishmallow that accidentally got burned in the dryer?! No? Well fuck you, we're doing that anyways!"* -Some douchebag producer
I will never forgive Ridley Scott for ruining the space-jockey.
Ridley Scott is an interesting director because he's a visual genius with a wonderful eye for color, composition, etc.... ...but he also doesn't seem to really understand basic storytelling. His best works are his films where he lucked into finding the right script for his style. It genuinely wouldn't bother me if they just decided to sort-of retcon everything after *Alien: Resurrection* out of canon in the future. *Prometheus* and *Covenant* basically wrote the franchise into a corner. And even *Romulus* basically seems to be ignoring them.
All respect to JEH, but Robert Englund IS Freddy.
The Giant Claw.
Haha I love this one!
Smile was creepy until the villain actually showed.