10 Tricks Horror Movies Use To Scare You

Zombies and vampires and hill-top cannibals quite frankly have nothing when compared to that weird little humanoid kid from Vivarium. I could take on fifty of those half-brained freaks from Shaun of the Dead but put me in front of that one little sh*t and I'm running.

The fundamental idea of that movie did not require the kid to look like a human at all. The process it compares itself to, in which a cuckoo chick slowly takes over a nest of other birds and is raised by its unknowing surrogate parents, literally lends itself to the implanted child being different in appearance.

Why make him look like a little boy then? Because the filmmakers know that giving us a creature with humanoid features but a discordant voice and behaviour is far more unnerving. It plants our villain right in the uncanny valley, which is not a ravine you want to find yourself in.

Plenty of different aspects of film cash in on the human-but-not-quite idea, ranging from your own reflection becoming someone you don’t recognise right through to evil dolls coming to life. The reason Annabelle and Chucky are so creepy isn’t just because they’re meant to inanimate objects, but because they are dangerously close to being human.

If you tried to remake Puppet Master with the decidedly non-human Sesame Street puppets, for example, it would be nowhere near as scary. Although, it probably would be really funny to watch.