10 Most Underwhelming Horror Movie Monster Reveals
After all that suspense, these reveals left audiences more than a little disappointed.
Classic horror logic dictates that you should spend most of a film dropping subtle hints at the identity of the big monster, before revealing it in all its glory in one climactic scene in the third act.
This is basically what made Jaws the blockbuster it was and has done the same for countless other pictures across history.
It's a good formula, but what happens when you spend all that time building to something only for it to fall flatter than a pancake in the path of a steam-roller?
Not only movie monsters are created equal and thus not all monster reveals can be Bruce the shark emerging from the water. These 10 films were all looking to capture some of that Spielberg magic, but instead found themselves having Close Encounters of the Turd Kind.
Whether the reveal was poorly timed, poorly executed, or the monsters simply weren't up to snuff, these big moments were meant to send audiences running for cover, but instead, they had them rolling in the aisles.
If they had known the responses they were going to get, these creatures would have definitely stayed in the shadows.
10. Xavier Cambarro - Dagon
From 2001 comes the Spanish movie Dagon, an adaptation of a work by everyone’s favourite problematic author of gothic horror, H. P. Lovecraft.
The film follows the fortunes of four friends who come across a coastal town after their boat is destroyed in a storm. They discover that, many years ago, the townsfolk began worshipping a demonic sea god named Dagon and, as a result, the settlement is now populated by half-fish, half-human creatures.
You don’t want to know how those got made.
The big reveal comes at the end of the movie when Paul, one of the victims, comes face-to-face with Xavier Cambarro, the grandson of the original priest of Dagon. Actually, that should be face-to-fin, as Xavier has morphed into a hideous nightmare of man and sea creature.
Whilst something like this might look great today, this film simply didn’t have the means or the money to make Xavier look good. His effects are tacky at best and distracting at worst. He’s meant to be this feared semi-mystical being, but instead, he comes across more like a last-minute Hallowe’en job.
He should have never come out of the water.