8 Disturbing Horror Movie Monsters (And What They Represent)

Horror movies have always functioned as an extension of our societal fears. Film is an art form after all, and one that often has something to say about the climate it's released in, no matter how deeply buried it is between the brutal, bloody lines.

Outlandish, political, and often downright weird, there's all sorts of strange stories behind the scariest of monsters, and they only serve to make them that much more terrifying. Or at the very least, offer something pretty interesting to think about.

Trust me, once you see the Xenomorph as a giant penis-headed stalker representative of sexual anxieties in a giant vagina spaceship, there's no going back.

Considering the film revolves around a little girl crawling out of a television screen and straight into our reality, it feels somewhat on the nose to say she's representative of a fear of technology - a portrayal of our anxieties as inhabitants of a digital age. Sadako, or Samara in the American version, was first born in the shift of a society on the edge of a new millennium, coming out in 1998 and 2002 in her respective international versions.

Bound to a cursed VHS tape, she's the first version of a creature that's linked to our media. Consuming television and films leads quite bluntly to death, and as the sequels have racked up over the years her metaphor has only strengthened - turning into a viral internet sensation in the latest movie Rings in a depiction of our technological advancements.

She's the walking embodiment of relying too heavily on what we see on our screens, and that it can very easily come back to bite us. Her manipulation of the protagonists to convince them she's a good person, one in need of freeing, also plays into the way that the media can lead us to believe whatever narrative suits them through television and internet outlets.

All the while, there's something far more sinister lurking underneath the surface.