10 Horror Movie Monster Designs Everyone Hated

Horror movies will often live or die on the strength of their central monster design. It's tough to come up with a truly unique creature these days, but if there's something neat for audiences to latch onto, that's usually good enough.

To the same token, though, a creature design that falls short of the mark can end up leaving audiences unintentionally amused, to the extent that it ends up sinking the entire movie.

While not all of the following 10 horror movies were entirely undone by their janky monsters, they were all certainly compromised by disappointing designs that didn't come up to snuff. From a certain entity that reminded us way too much of a particular legendary heavy metal band, to a redesign of a classic horror villain that just wasn't it, and the misguided decision to ditch practical SFX in favour of VFX, these critters and beasties were largely reviled by general audiences.

And so, it absolutely pays for filmmakers to workshop the hell out of their creatures, to spend the extra money getting it right and ensure that audiences are suitably creeped out, rather than reacting the entirely wrong way.

It's a credit to the unnerving atmosphere of Scott Derrickson's Sinister that it can overcome the fact that its Babylonian god antagonist, Bughuul, looks almost exactly like one of Slipknot's lead guitarists, Mick Thomson.

The long, greasy hair and distorted facial features just scream "metalhead," and to make this even tougher to take seriously, Bughuul shows up decked out in a spiffy suit from the neck down.

Buhuul's rather silly design is oft-cited as Sinister's big, glaring flaw because the build-up to his reveal is so brilliantly disturbing by comparison. This is perhaps best exemplified by the film's horrifying ending, which is swiftly undermined by a last-second final jump scare as Bughuul leaps into frame, which is probably more likely to rouse laughter from viewers than genuine terror.

This is absolutely a classic case of a horror movie that should've shown its villainous entity as little as possible.