#5 – Jigsaw
I rank Jigsaw at the bottom of the list for two reasons. The first is that even though he’s a twisted killer who forces his victims to kill each other or causes them to inflict unspeakable acts of self-mutilation upon themselves, he does all this to prove a point-that life is precious and if you’re not willing to appreciate life, you don’t deserve to have one. So if you think about it, Jigsaw is only trying to help you, albeit in his own twisted and unorthodox way. Reason two for his low ranking is that out of all the characters on my list, he is the only one who is actually human. Some might argue that his humanity makes him much more terrifying but I don’t agree. Call me old-fashioned but I like my monsters to more physically impressive, like if they are eight feet tall with ungodly strength and whose presence is made known by the ends of their claws dragging on the floor behind you in the night.——————————————-
#4 – Pyramid Head
Many know Pyramid Head from the video games series Silent Hill. But since he did appear in the Silent Hill movie, he counts as a horror movie monster in my book, which is why I rank him at number four. His character is only in the mind of James Sunderland, Silent Hill’s main character. But that was the video game-in the Silent Hill movie, he does appear but his character has less symbolism and instead of being the psychological terror he was in the game, he’s been relegated to being a merely physically intimidating monster. He is still a huge, scary sword-wielding bad guy looking to kill anything that gets in his way, but without his complex background from the game, the movie character of Pyramid Head is just not quite as scary to me. Because of watering-down, I rank him as number four, even though he originally was a horrific monster spawned with the sole purpose of torturing others.——————————————-
#3 – Pennywise
What makes Pennywise (aka “It”) so incredibly scary is that he plays off of children’s greatest fears and terrorizes them until he’s ready to kill them. The premise of the story is that this evil entity sleeps and awakens every 27 years to wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting masses. “It” apparently originated in a void both containing and surrounding the universe and would often dwell in a universe outside of our own, which makes his defeat all the more difficult. In the film, he decides to portray himself as clown and refers to himself as “Pennywise the Dancing Clown.” My reason for ranking Pennywise in third place is because for the longest time I never found clowns to be scary at all-that is, until I saw this movie. Add in the fact that Pennywise’s true form is believed to be a giant spider and I am absolutely repulsed by spiders, I think “It” is one terrifying monster in all his forms. Plus, he was played Tim Curry, one of my favorite actors.——————————————-
#2 – Jason
The reason to why I chose to rank Jason as number two instead of number one is that within the Friday the 13th franchise there is some confusion about how he dies. In the first movie, it’s stated that he dies at a young age but in the second movie, it’s said he didn’t die but instead grew up and then as an adult took revenge for his mother’s death. In other Friday the 13th movies, it is clearly explained how he is brought back to life if he died in the preceding movie but sometimes it’s never explained how he is still walking around and it’s this perpetual confusion that prevents him from ranking higher on my list. However, he is still ranked second for his pure resilience as the bad guy who just cannot stay dead. He dies but keeps getting resurrected through methods like electrical shock or comes back to life through the ritualistic summoning by a telekinetic psychic. Anyone who is this determined to kill is definitely a high-ranking horror monster in my book.——————————————-
#1 – Freddy Krueger
Remember when you were five years old and your parents told you to never disobey them because if you did, the boogey man would get you? Well, whether or not they knew it, they were talking about Freddy Krueger. Making his movie debut in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, Freddy has spent over 20 years terrifying people onscreen and off. The reason why I chose him as the number one scariest horror movie monster is because of the symbolism that goes with his original character; he was thought up as the ultimate evil with a need to kill children. He personifies every tale that warns children of the consequences of disobeying their parents, sneaking out after dark or other common misconduct. He is literally your worst nightmare come to life and he invades your dreams while you sleep, the one place where you’d expect to be absolutely safe. When he attacks his victims in their sleep, he uses their ultimate fear as a weapon right before killing them. As children we were always told that no matter how scary our nightmares might be, they could never really hurt us. Freddy takes this usual sense of security and slashes his hideous claws right through it. For his personification of true evil and his attacks when people are at their most vulnerable both physically and mentally, Freddy Krueger is on the top of my list of scariest movie monsters.
