10 Horror Movies Where The Villain Is Never Seen

A pacey and entertaining horror bolstered by a high quality cast, The Mothman Prophecies could be described as a creature doesn’t-feature. Starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, Mark Pellington’s 2002 film makes an ambitious and mostly successful attempt to tackle heavy themes of loss, obsession, and great big moth creatures.

Gere plays John, whose wife dies early in the film as a result of a car crash. When he checks her belongings, he finds a notebook festooned with drawings of a huge red eyed insect. A few years later he finds himself in a small town where Linney’s local cop Connie has been receiving reports and drawings of similar creatures.

The meat of the film is in Gere’s bereavement and desperation to remain close to his late wife by way of investigating the Mothman mystery. The source book, of the same name, is a more focussed look at cryptozoology and local legend, but the film dips into something demonic; with sightings of the Mothman come inexplicable gaps in time, and prophecies of doom.

The film’s characters must learn to accept the things we’re unable to understand, and accordingly it’s appropriate that we never see the creature. Also, it’s kind of hard to make a moth all that scary, no matter how big.