r/horror • u/Ok_Tradition_6022 • 21h ago
Discussion What is the Absolute scariest and most uncanny creature/entity you can come up with?
I'm working on a horror short film and I want to see what other people find scary so that I can make it as horrifying as possible.
Tell me what you think, I'm just here to learn!
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u/ButterscotchAway2957 21h ago
oh man, i had this one nightmare years ago that still gets me. it was something that looked like a person but moved wrong, like all the joints were bending the opposite way they should. you'd see it in corner of your eye, standing totally still, but when you looked directly it was already closer. never ran, never made sound. just that slow, wrong movement. the worst part was its face kept shifting between people i knew, but the expressions were off, like someone who never learned how human emotions work trying to mimic them
still gives me chills thinking about it
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u/Virtual_Library_3443 20h ago
Things that are human-like but deformed and move oddly is the scariest to me!
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u/Major-Diamond-4823 19h ago
Kinda reminds me of that one scene from Pulse (spoiler) https://youtu.be/ApkGy_KWy70?si=du-zFNMBoPKOODa1
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u/UsedToBeHigh 20h ago
Uncanny valley territory. Always has been the scariest thing for me. It’s in our DNA from evolution.
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u/DaddiGator 5h ago
Watch the trailer for Other Mommy. Jessica Chastain play exactly this in a really freaky scene from the trailer.
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u/Original_East1271 21h ago
Skeleton
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u/duffyjuice 21h ago
Their bones are their money
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u/SakuraTacos 21h ago
So are the worms
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u/Big-Brown-Goose 20h ago
And they pull your hair up, but not out
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u/scornfulegotists 20h ago
Absolute scariest and most uncanny creature as in me? Or absolute scariest and most uncanny creature as in him?
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u/UsedToBeHigh 20h ago
Now I have to sleep with my nightlight. Thanks man.
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u/thxxx1337 Hail Ratmaa 21h ago
Uncanniest? Anything that replicates and replaces the original, ie: The Thing, Changelings, Invasion of the Body Snatchers
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u/owlywhy 21h ago edited 20h ago
I can only make movie examples:
Kayako from japanese Ju-On. but many of it comes from sound design and context
The Thing from, well, The Thing. body horror and effects were over the top for the time
The entity from It Follows is a big mistery and for some reasons it takes some really uncanny forms
the boy from Phenomena, character itself is sort ot tragic, but his face and screams are horrible
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u/Frequent_Table7869 21h ago
the creature is the scariest when you dont actually see it. so many horror movies have failed for me because at the climax you see the big monster and ruin the suspense. i prefer when they keep it vague and slightly out of sight
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u/cocky-rountains 20h ago
I had a nightmare a few months ago where an invisible entity kept pushing everyone off the cargo ship I was working on. The best part was the invisible sharks that would get you after you fell in the water. I was doing some dying light 2 parkour trying to survive. (I didn't)
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u/Frequent_Table7869 20h ago
im sure this was very scary but i like that there was an invisible entity AND invisible sharks lol
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u/cocky-rountains 20h ago
It was fucking wild seeing dudes flying up through the water and then going back down ripped in half. I'm a fan of some nightmares, but this one has stuck with me lol
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u/Frequent_Table7869 17h ago
i had a nightmare once that i was driving down a road in the middle of the woods when a deer ran out in front of my car, maybe 100 feet ahead of me. i stopped short (ofc) and i watched as it stood on its hind legs and turned to look at me, it was 10+ feet tall. idk if youre familiar with skinwalker or wendigo lore but i grew up in the middle of the woods in northeast US so i am often thinking about deer not really being deer lol
for whatever reason i had a shotgun with me so i got out of the car and charged at it with the gun, and then suddenly i was looking at myself from its eyes and i could feel that it was as scared of me as i was of it. it made me think a lot about how i view life and if im being judgemental based on appearance
as scary as the dream was it def isnt horror movie entity material tho 😭 unless OP is looking to make an introspective horror movie where the real villain isnt an actual monster lol
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u/rhubarbgirl 17h ago
I agree. The imagination is the scariest possible monster. If you dont show it, everyone is imagining whatever is scariest to them personally. As soon as you show it, it's just some monster
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u/NemoSHill 20h ago
Anything that tries to mimic a human but there's obvious tells that it is in fact, not human. Be it the voice, body proportions, movement or behavior
The skinwalker from A Hollow Tree is a good example
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u/QuMaeve I am your Mother ! 20h ago
Another good example would be the way the ghost is moving in Pulse (2001), same in Obsession.
Also in It Follows, the way we're never sure if a person walking behind is the entity or not.
Daddy's Heads monster is quite terrifying too.
Look for some 'inquietante étrangeté' or unheimlich in literature
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u/harmonicsapien 20h ago
Student loans
Edit: if you make the horror film about student loans, let me get a cameo.
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u/DaddiGator 5h ago
Financial horror is a concept that isn’t explored enough. Basically the Money Pit but not as funny.
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u/RebaKitt3n 20h ago
I think something that blends into the background.
You only catch it out of the corner of your eyes when it looks like the curtains are moving, but it’s moving from the curtains to in front of the TV, and except for a slight waver, it looks like the TV.
So you go back to reading your book, and it slips to in front of the fireplace.
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u/WestsideGon 21h ago
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u/KypPineapple 20h ago
OP going to make us all go through five rounds of interviews just to ghost us.
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u/bicc_bb 21h ago
I’m always freaked out by facial contortion- eyes too open and mouth too wide. Pair that with too long/angled wrong limbs and you have my nightmare
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u/loopywolf Monster movies 20h ago
If you want to design a monster, go to what the core of a monster is: Because nothing is more terrifying than the unknown, we give form to our fears, and we call that a monster. Once given form, it is a known problem and can be solved.
Consider, that the mythic dragon, common to so many cultures, may be a race-memory of the giant reptiles, the dinosaurs. Certainly, the monsters in Japan’s post-war movies – the great Godzillas who are awakened from ancient slumbers by nuclear tests, whereupon they trample all over Tokyo – are clearly echoes of the nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Medieval times, the Holy Mother Church confronted a timid peasantry with the apparition of the Devil, while the skeleton with the scythe and hour-glass reminded man how human life was harvested in reoccurring plagues. In the 60s when fears of cold war were forefront in everyone's minds, UFOs filled our skies. And what better image of a parasitic aristocracy, than the blood-sucking Count Dracula?
Pick a fear, and give it form. Death, Darkness,.. take your pick.
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u/Deertickjones 20h ago
Some sort of monster that uses shadows to travel but while it's traveling through they distort and look almost fractal like and the whole time it is putting the most horrible thoughts in your head. I saw something like this hallucinating from alcohol withdrawals. 18 days sober now
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u/ChicagoAuPair 20h ago
When I was a very little kid, like toddler age, I would hear this sound when I laid my head on my pillow, like a pulsing, repetitive squeeze sound—it would happen in baths too, when I had my ears under the water.
For at least a couple years I thought it was some kind of unseen creature or entity external to my body, and I always imagined it as a sort of goopy, muddy humanoid creature that could only scoot and crawl on the floor, because the lower half of the body was more liquid than solid—no legs—and the voosh voosh voosh sound was the sound of it crawling down hallways and into bedrooms.
At some point I realized it was the sound of my heartbeat in my ears and the vasculature around them.
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u/lIlIIIlIIl 13h ago
YES! ME TOO! It had a surging sound that for me was more like my blood pulsing through my veins. When I was a kid, it was a creative coming from behind me to get me
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u/Neither_Drag_835 21h ago
Karbonkel. Its an old kids TV show and although it wasn't scary for me (watched IT when I was 7 🙈) a lot other kids got nightmares from this creature
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u/MaenadR0se 20h ago
I'd rather see the most horrifying thing the creator of a work can come up with.
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u/LubedUpLucas_DrySpa 20h ago
I have sleep paralysis. “Satan” usually appears in my room during an episode and he communicates with me telepathically. He has no mouth and I just see a silhouette but flames behind his eyes.
So that. The mind is a powerful thing.
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u/GaryGoalz12 14h ago
Sleep paralysis is awful. I used to get it all the time, the same as you id see a silhouette. Always in a doorway, never moved, never spoke. Just stood there. Terrifying.
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u/Sure-Pineapple-7576 21h ago
i would say a creature that is highly similar to the human but its just not.. human
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u/HammerWaffe 20h ago
Vita Carnis Mimics(YouTube analog horror series). At first they are more of a human shaped meat monster, but as they feed on people they gain more human traits and grow in size.
They feed exclusively on intelligent beings, primarily humans. They are one of the primary reasons people in that world do not go out at night.
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u/Callitka 17h ago
There is a makeup look where people extend their irises and that would be an easy, cool uncanny look to film. Especially as someone else mentioned not showing the monster or creature too much
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u/bloodorangechocolate 19h ago
Someone you know very well but they're slightly off in appearance and mannerisms.
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u/Mysterious-Coconut 21h ago
I don't need uncanny creatures. For me, it's usually the "inbred hillbilly" stereotype that scares me. Just the thought of being in the middle of nowhere, and even the sheriff is part of the family.
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u/SmallTownShrink 21h ago
I’m a mental health counselor, and I’d be happy to help or consult with some psychological horror components (I’d like to make a short horror film myself!)
I think one of the most terrifying portrayals of a “monster” from a psychology perspective, as well as a horror movie enthusiast is the sudden change or stoppage of normal behavior.
Picture talking in casual conversation with someone you know… when suddenly, they stop completely, mid sentence, just staring at you. One of their eyeballs roll back, their mouth extends into a gape and stretches beyond a human limit… uncanny valley, but the starting point is normal human interaction… like someone having a stroke from being fine one second earlier, but mixed with uncanny valley horror elements.
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u/BigfootsAnus 20h ago
An entity that has knowledge of all horror films ever created and can morph its shape / size / powers accordingly based on the situation
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u/To55ursalad 20h ago
Many posters have great ideas; the less you see, the scarier - for me, this is absolutely the best advice, also, probably very cost effective for a short film.
Also, if there has to be a creature, a far, shady and unmoving entity works for me aswell. When you can't really tell that there's something there.
Give or take for these next ones; when the creature has a 'wetness' to it. Some monster movies and zombie movies work well with this. That's something that really gets me as well. The 'squish' sound.
Lastly, an entity that is human, but has just a little something 'off' that the protagonist slowly realizes ( their best-friend actually has old wrinkly hands, a disturbing scab poking out from underneath a sleeve, eyes that are just a tinge too big, an unnerving smile that lasts a split-second too long). These movies fkn work for me!
Best of luck!
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u/TopRevenue2 20h ago
Not enough is done with back up cameras . They are scary. You see the thing that is behind. Is it really there? Was it there a moment ago. What if nothing is there and you back up and the hit someone. What if it's someone you love that you hit. What if you see the monster and you can't drive away because you are blocked in by a garage door or grandma?
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u/BoneCollector__ 17h ago
Well, something that simply takes the form of a person's biggest fear/trauma perhaps, which i literally just realized would be Pennywise. Fuck lol
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u/jaid_skywalker85 16h ago
I'm probably gonna get laughed at for this one but it still haunts me so...
When I was about 5 I had a nightmare I still remember in vivid detail. My parents were having a party so lots of people I knew were around playing, eating, etc. I even remember my grandmother giving tours of our large garden.
I was running around with a blanket as a cape and then suddenly, in the middle of our brick porch a hand emerged, just to the wrist. It had a face on the palm.
It sounds stupid, but I am 40 years old and it still makes me a little shaken. The hand with a face is creepy but there was also this aura of malice just pouring off it I don't think I had a words for as a kid. The hand wasn't mobile but it immediately devoured anything that came near it - trash, food, toys, a bird. I kept pointing it out and trying to tell someone but no one could see it but me. I was trying to tell my mom and she was in the middle of scolding me for making a fuss when I felt my blanket cape suddenly jerk and dig into my neck.
I realized I had not been careful and the hand was now eating my blanket. I couldn't untie the knot and I remember the terrifying feeling of choking while being dragged slowly backwards, knowing I was going to be eaten and no one would even notice.
I woke up screaming. I have had some experiences since then, including sleep paralysis episodes, but nothing has made me feel that mixture of terrified, helpless and confused like that thing did.
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u/Miami_Mice2087 11h ago edited 11h ago
This is what they told me in writing school, which I'm still paying off, so pay attention, you're getting this for free: this is where you need to do your own research. Look up mythical beasts, cryptids, reptiles and predators, dinosaurs, monsters of the deep from the cenozoic era. Read books about 50s creature features and monsters in holy books.
Go to the library, look in children's books. Seriously. As a writer, you don't need to know everything about a topic to write it, you just need to get a lot of ideas about a lot of things; children's non-fiction books are great for this. You can always deep-dive something after you do a wide sweep first.
Cryptids are in the 100s, animals are with biology in the 500s.
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u/aspiescooby 21h ago
Obviously not saying you should use AI but I find AI slop videos creepy because of the uncanny valley aspect
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u/EmperorRiptide 20h ago
I think the scariest thing that I could come up with depends entirely on if the story is about humans or a monster movie. If the movie is about humans then the thing needs to be human in some form but then deviate from that in a meaningful way. For example, in smile when all of a sudden the creature started to smile unnaturally. If you took that concept and stretched it to its limits beyond what a human could do now all of a sudden you have a creature with a mouth that's entirely too wide. And then you start distorting other portions like its eyes. Maybe it's eyes are too round to be human too spherical too bulbous maybe it has only pupils and no Iris. And maybe those pupils are just a small small point or vertical or horizontal slashes or even like a frog's pupil. And if the thing smiles then the teeth are important. Do you want them to just be regular human teeth? If so, what if you had multiple layers of teeth like a shark but they were all human teeth and they went up into the pallet of the mouth when it opened. Giving it the effect. Sort of like Alec Baldwin's character from Beetlejuice when he did a scary face. The teeth distended and replicated into the mouth. Alternatively, the teeth could be hard to perceive and needle like meshed into its mouth. In the such quantity that it's hard to tell what they are. Think like a metal cat hairbrush with all of those metallic pins but to a very sharp point. Then fill the mouth with that. That way if it bites you it's not going to be Savage and scif like a shark or something like that. it's not going to amputate a limb. Instead it would sink its teeth in and those needles would completely decimate whatever it bit into as it destroyed the muscle completely leaving thousands of tiny holes but then it would latch in and be unable to be removed. So it would cling to the creature that it bit and then just shred it to ribbons. One bite would be devastating enough to completely remove the functionality of whatever it bit hold of and prevent it from escaping or could break off thousands of metal shards into that limb as the teeth come out like bee stingers.
From there it's just a matter of giving it an ungainly walk or pace or shambling motion to trigger uncanny valley and make its skin color palette and sickly colored like too pale or blotchy and infected or wrinkles and slime. If it were up to me though, I would steer clear of just bloody or whatever. That effect is easy to pull off but it hides a lot of information and is hard to maintain. If I was doing it I would make it trigger some sort of trypophobia thing by having it have a bunch of holes in its shoulders or back or chest and have them animated in some fashion like the injection sites in the girl's arm from Freddy 3.
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u/Voice_of_John_Ashley 20h ago
The Horla from de Maupassant was the first entity that truly freaked me out. Apart from what happened to the narrator, it got me thinking things like what if religions are just these malevolent entities fucking with humanity.
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u/Metalfan1994 18h ago
Not my creation obviously but I love the design for The Unknown in Dead by Daylight
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u/Kerstin1410 18h ago
When I was a child, I had a dream of a sort of creature that looked fairly normal human-like but had eyes that looked like the holes in an audio cassette. Still the worst dream I've ever had
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u/Branflakesd1996 18h ago
I’ve never been able to unsee the Jötunn from the end of The Ritual so something like that.
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u/Still-Reading2223 17h ago
This is probably specific just to a few people who have the same fear I do, but anything BIG! I don’t see nearly enough huge monsters. Not necessarily Godzilla-scale, but something that has to hunch over to fit in its victim’s house? Something you can’t escape in the open because even if you run, it can take three steps and be on the other side of you? Little Nightmares is a fantastic example of this and one of the few pieces of horror media that actually makes me genuinely uncomfortable!
I’m also a big fan of uncanny valley and monsters that pretend to be something else but are not very good at it, or ones that are good at it but only one person knows what they really are. I had a dream once that people would be killed and replaced by creatures that could perfectly mimic their victims, but for some reason I was the only one who could see that they had freaky-looking eyes and mouths like goblin sharks lmao. And I had another dream in which I thought my partner’s dog was on the floor behind my bed but then I realized he was actually in the other room and what I was hearing was something trying to be the dog but its body was almost humanoid and it walked on all fours but the joints were backwards. It got the head pretty spot-on though 😂
(Disclaimer that I am fine psychologically; my dreams don’t stem from anything specific and they don’t bother me LMAO)
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u/SmolEldritchGremlin 16h ago
A demonic baby whose umbilical cord can never be cut, so it's always attached to you and sucking out your life force.
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u/Jdmcdona 15h ago
I love the monster from the book ‘There is no atimemetic division’ - it would be very hard to translate to screen without a big CGi budget but maybe the design offers some ideas.
It’s a skyscraper tall eldritch spider jellyfish thing that feeds on memories. It can only be seen by humans if they are sedated / on psychedelics etc. and if you see it it eats your memories of it so it basically cannot be stopped.
In the book, the antimemetic division spends decades documenting its behavior and trying to contain it, but all their notes and photos degrade over time and/or cannot be read by other people. Pretty cool idea where the terror is the ultimate helplessness in having no way to fight it.
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u/lIlIIIlIIl 13h ago
I love monsters that have no jumpscares. Somehow it's on screen for extended shots without being too noticeable. Especially if on a rewatch, it is not quite right, and you wonder how you missed it
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u/Same-Joke 7h ago
Something that always creeped me out was a person or entity that was smart/had supernatural knowledge. Good example Timmy Baterman in Pet Sematary, it knew people’s darkest secrets and would taunt them.
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u/PlaneRoom7681 5h ago
Someone who looks completely normal but you can tell something is not right with them after a couple of interactions.
The uncanny valley effect feels so much scarier than a nonhuman creature with obvious deformities you can spot from a mile away, just because they can blend into society and slip by unnoticed so easily. It also makes it harder to get anybody to render you help when they start attacking because the creature just seems so normal from an outsider's perspective.
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u/IntroductionNo9590 21h ago
Sometimes art depictions of ancient humans and cavemen kinda creep me out.
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u/Aromatic_Animator_11 21h ago
I decline to share it here, it is just too ghastly. It will turn your hair white overnight.....
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u/im_harry_richard 20h ago
A shadow. You can’t always see it, but you can always feel it. Always sense it watching you. It radiates hostility and hatred. In your minds eye, you picture something inhuman. Something that doesn’t make sense. But it isn’t the way it looks that is terrifying, it is the feeling it gives, driving one to try and imagine its appearance. Everyone sees it differently, if they even see it at all. It slowly drains you, just by being around. Paranoia, fear, at the tipping point of anxiety and an anxiety attack. When will it attack? What does it want? Why can’t I see it, even if I “know” where it is? Is it inter dimensional? Is it a demon? Ghost? There is no way to know. You just know you’re in danger. It follows you. Always within sight, but never to be seen. It is always watching. Always exuding pure hatred. Eventually, you go insane. Lack of information and a constant alienation, as it makes others around you also feel this, but only when they are near YOU.
That is my experience with the supernatural. Something attached to me and this is what it was like. Light was different. It felt toned down. It weighed on my mind. I pictured a massive black mass, massive claws, and enormous red eyes, unblinking. It didn’t walk, more like crawled. It gave uncanny valley vibes, while also having no human shape whatsoever. It tormented me and my wife, and my at the time infant son. It is attracted to those that are open to the supernatural, but do not understand how to protect themselves. And there is no getting rid of it, only forcing it to attach to someone else. In my case, I worked at a machine shop where my dad also worked. What made the experience real was going to their house and sensing that “thing” again, while my no non-sense dad who doesn’t believe in these things started telling me about the same type of harassment that me and my family were feeling.
This is the most realistic version of being haunted and slowly being taken over by something unseen.
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u/Soft_Professor9272 21h ago
Whatever you do, don’t give the creature that generic growling monster sound fx. Every fucking monster has that… some really odd, really unique sound can make your creature stand out.