10 Brilliant Horror Movie Monsters You Were Completely Unprepared For

It's always important when writing about the work of influential horror author HP Lovecraft to note that the writer's work is in the public domain.

As a result, because his many creations are not subject to copyright, a great many authors and filmmakers have opted to include some of his literary inventions in their own work. Lovecraft's creepy cults and elder gods crop up in everything from Stephen King's short story Jerusalem's Lot, to Edgar Cantero's genre-blending Scooby Doo satire Meddling Kids, to Scooby Doo itself in its Mystery Incorporated incarnation.

All this to say, you never know when a Lovecraft encounter is on the cards.

Take this year's Underwater, a horror thriller which sees Kristen Stewart and a handful of her crew face off against some sort of deep sea foe at the bottom of the ocean. For much of this middling horror’s runtime, the legendary elder god Cthulu’s mutated minions are the primary threat, mutated oversized humans who pick off the cast one by one.

However the film's shocking ending features an appearance by none other than the head honcho himself Cthulu, a gigantic monster whose sheer scale is a shock for audiences who expected a Xenomorph-sized foe, rather than one bigger than Mount Everest.