10 Terrifying Movie Characters You Never Actually Got To See
8. Them - Them
Theres nothing like a good home invasion film, and 2006s Them is no exception. Set in Romania, writer Lucas and teacher Clem are having a lovely weekend in a stunning, if suspiciously remote, manor house with countless beautiful rooms, located down through a gorgeous woodland. After a fairly adorable evening of cuddling and giggling, the two retire to bed. Its Clem who wakes at around four in the morning hearing music playing outside, and the two of them investigate. They see their car being driven away, and then the lights go out and the phone lines get cut leaving our scared couple to lock themselves in their bedroom. Footsteps and an awful unidentified clicking noise run through the house, and Lucas and Clem are generally terrorised. What made this different to other home invasion films, for the most part at least, was that you never see the perpetrators. Whilst films like The Strangers and Youre Next show the invaders in moderately terrifying masks, you barely see anything of who is attacking, or even how many of them there are, until near the very end of the film. This was brilliantly effective to ramp up the tension, and then late in the film you realise that its done for a very good reason. The discovery that the perpetrators are pre-teen children serves up a jarring reality, and the fact that theyre just kids makes their violence even more shocking. Despite being linked to the New French Extremity, Them is not too gruesome thankfully, but hiding the antagonists along with the final reveal makes it a tense and taught picture.
