The world is in no shortage of scary things. Yet not everyone shares the same fears. Death is a common source of panic for the average person. Then there are those who flinch at spiders or at the idea of public speaking. No matter what leaves you scared witless, know you’re not alone.
With his 1986 novel It, Stephen King changed how we forever view clowns. His Pennywise character made people phobic of these colorful performers. But is Pennywise the creepiest character there is? Possibly so. But for argument’s sake, here are ten other characters who are way creepier than Pennywise.
Mitsuko in Dark Water
Pennywise terrorized children in It, but in Dark Water, a divorced mother does not realize she’s been marked by a child’s ghost. It all starts when Yoshimi and her daughter Ikuko find a stray child’s bag on the premises. However, there are no other kids living in the apartment building. As Yoshimi’s mind unravels, the restless child spirit Mitsuko latches herself onto the struggling mother.
Hideo Nakata captivated the world with Ring; he then brought horror even closer to home with Dark Water. Although Mitsuko is a vengeful onryō type ghost, she is sympathetic. Doesn’t make her any less frightful.
The Creature in Under the Bed
In Steven C. Miller’s little-known horror movie Under the Bed, a boy is reunited with his older teenage brother. The reason for his two-year absence is he nearly burned down their house. Now, the father has remarried, and his wife wants to meet her other stepson. Sharing one room, the brothers must confront their childhood fear. From beneath the beds, an unspeakable evil bides its time until nightfall.
Director Miller uses a nightmare-fueled monster to convey adolescent dread at its purest. The creature in the film is a perfect representation of what we once thought lurked under our beds.
The Intruder in The Entity
An unseen intruder targets a single mother in the 1982 paranormal thriller The Entity. She is violated again and again, but there are no physical signs her attacker exists. Because of the woman’s past trauma, her therapist believes she is only imagining all of this. Yet after meeting two paranormal researchers, the woman learns her invisible assaulter is actually a ghost.
The Entity is alarming for several reasons. The movie not only communicates a universal fear of being taken without one’s consent, but it also shows how victims are not readily believed. The ghost’s invisibility only makes the threat even more frightening.
Pipes in Ghostwatch
In 1992, BBC1 aired one of the most controversial programs in the nation’s history of television. Ghostwatch originally premiered on Halloween night as a real event as opposed to something scripted. In the special, a haunted house in Northolt, London is visited by a field reporter. Meanwhile, the host and a parapsychologist watch remotely from a TV studio. It eventually becomes obvious there really is something eerie happening inside the house.
The Conjuring 2 is based on the same Enfield account as Ghostwatch, but the latter leaves so much more to the imagination. And that’s where things get truly terrifying.
The Oil Slick in Creepshow 2
In Creepshow 2’s segment “The Raft”, four college students visit an isolated, empty lake. Or they so think it’s empty. As they rest on a swim raft in the middle of the lake, the group becomes prey to a sentient mass of black ooze. The creature eats anything — or anyone — it can snare. And one by one, the characters are picked off by the living oil slick.
Stephen King’s story will make you scared of swimming in any lake. It’s a tale with no explanation or background. It just exists in a bubble where no one can hear you scream.
Alice in Lake Mungo
In the Australian horror mockumentary Lake Mungo, an average family has a less than average problem. Following their daughter Alice’s death, the family thinks they are being haunted. By Alice. The fictional filmmakers struggle to understand what is happening here. Is Alice really still with them? Or is this simply a hoax to achieve fifteen minutes worth of fame? It very well seems like the case has been resolved, but viewers are left doubtful.
Alice rattles us not because she’s wreaking havoc on the living. It’s the notion she’s still alive — watching her family and friends — that leaves us white-knuckled.
The Scarecrows in Scarecrows
In Scarecrows, a gang of thieves steals three million dollars from a military base. During their escape to Mexico via a stolen cargo plane, one of the robbers double-crosses the others and bails. The plane lands in what turns out to be a haunted field inhabited by living scarecrows. These sinister creatures appear harmless at first, but that’s certainly not the case when they come alive and attack the interlopers.
The film’s namesakes are collectively ferocious, enigmatic demons whose only goal is to maim. There’s no appeal to them as they have no shred of humanity much less a soul.
Zelda Goldman in Pet Sematary
The character Rachel in Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary once had a sister named Zelda Goldman. Zelda was stricken with a severe case of spinal meningitis, and young Rachel frequently cared for her while their parents were away. Seeing her sister then die under her watch understandably traumatized Rachel.
In the first film adaptation of Pet Sematary, director Mary Lambert brought Zelda to life in the most unforgettable way. Actor Andrew Hubastek’s physicality and performance are why the stricken Zelda stays with viewers today. The sight of ghastly and gaunt Zelda also ignites our natural aversion to inescapable, real-world maladies.
The Entity in It Follows
In It Follows, college student Jay goes on a date with a guy named Noah. After they have sex, Jay is stalked by a malevolent entity at every turn. Said entity can take the form of anyone, and no one other than Jay can see it. It won’t stop until Jay is dead, or she passes the curse on to someone else. However, she’s not willing to do that. Not yet at least. So, she searches for a way to kill the entity instead.
It Follows’s antagonist brilliantly draws on our fear of the unknown without over-explaining its own origin.
The Thing in The Thing
American researchers at a base camp in Antarctica are under attack by a hostile alien lifeform. The parasitic creature can assimilate as well as imitate any living organism. It soon becomes clear that the being is among them, hiding in plain sight.
The titular creature in The Thing is similar to Pennywise largely because they’re aliens who can essentially glamour themselves. Beyond that, they have different M.O.’s. Pennywise eats children to sustain itself; the Thing’s goal is self-preservation. Its capacity to copy us to a T is unnerving. What’s worse is The Thing’s potentiality to do bigger, more awful things.
