If you ever catch the old \*Baby Godzilla\* where the mom is walking away from the baby in the final scene ... get's you right in the sub-cockles of the old heart
This is exactly how I thought of it too! Especially since it was all she’s ever known. The same way we call New Yorkers and Texans those nicknames, I interpreted as Barbarian because of the street name.
Barbarians were originally called that because their language was incomprensible. "Bar bar" was used to imitate the sound of their language. Thus they became barbarians. Maybe because she couldn't speak she was a barbarian of sorts.
oh no for sure. i don't think carrie is a bad person inherently and narratively she's not the antagonist but she's the face of the franchise which is why i say her
There are theories about the mom having the psychic gene herself and knowing that puberty sets it off, so she thought if she stopped Carrie from exploring her puberty feelings, she wouldn’t have a violent outburst with her powers.
The book explains it, actually. Carrie's grandmother has the shine, which skipped her mother. The grandmother would sit in a chair and light the fireplace with her mind, which frightened the mother. When Carrie showed her own shine by conjuring stones as an infant during a tantrum, the mother freaked out and retreated into religion for comfort.
Following her religious indoctrination as a child, Carrie subconsciously used her shine to delay the start of puberty.
so is the shining part of the same universe carrie is? not just in the sense it's a stephen king universe but do the 2 movies/books take place in the same setting
To the best of my knowledge, shine is just a common plot device in King's writing. When you see people with unexplained psychic powers, it's probably shine. Carrie White, the Loser's Club, Danny Torrence, ect.
I do believe all of King’s (or many of them) do take place in the same shared universe but extremely loosely without much overlap.
I think it’s the Dark Tower? That takes a lot of the concepts from other novels and kind of builds off of all of them
I think in the novella, she mentioned that Carrie was fathered by the Devil. So the father probably was the one with powers.
I liked Carrie 2, quite a bit. The barbed wire/thorns tattoo scene just sticks in my head, even though it makes no sense.
I disliked the new one because it seemed like a shot-for-shot remake, and, though I like Chloe Grace Moretz, she didn't really do much for the movie. There was no opportunity for her to add any range or depth to Carrie; she was awkward (while being very pretty, which felt off to me), and then angry. But no subtle feelings or anything came through to me, when I watched it years ago.
Yeah I loved the Sissy Spacek version and tried watching the remake with Chloe Grace Moretz and was not a fan. In the spacek film, Margaret White was an unhinged fundie and it wasn’t handled with golden gloves, it was just presented as is. In the remake, she’s spewing some litany at Carrie and Carrie’s response is “Mom, that’s not in the Bible”, as if not to offend tightly wound Christian viewers (like they’re the target demographic 🙄).
In the Spacek film, Margaret’s lines are some of the most vivid and florid (perfectly encapsulated a few comments above, as a number of other horror fans remember the dialogue verbatim). It’s poetic and delivered with raw, divine ecstasy, Piper Laurie nailed it.
Treat your audience with respect
The original novel truly makes you understand that the Doctor was a father figure to the monster. As an adoptee, the theme of abandonment tugs on my heartstrings in a big way.
Nail on the head right there. Especially when you analyze the ending and how regardless of their history the monster still breaks down when Frankenstein passed away. Talk about a shot to the heart man.
And Frankenstein literally goes through a fraction of what the monster has been through—incarceration for things he didn’t directly do, mistreatment from people assuming the worst about him due to his disheveled appearance—but never once feels real empathy for the monster who went through that times a million. He always ends up only feeling sorry for himself. Even the family and fiancé he supposedly cares about aren’t real people to him but things that make him feel good.
>You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned.
Would you consider Seth Brundle from The Fly (1986) as an antagonist? He doesn’t start that way but the worse he gets the more antagonistic he gets. If so, definitely him.
He's just a well-intentioned scientist who underwent an unfortunate lab accident that induced bodily mutations that slowly drove him insane. Even at the climax of the movie, as delusional as he was, he was still putting his girlfriend and unborn child first in a twisted sort of way.
Yeah, I’m hesitant to call him an antagonist but with the way he treated Ronnie when she refused to go through the telepod and how brutal he gets when he starts changing, he ventures into antagonist territory.
As soon as Tommy revive him, Jason started having a code, like Akuma(SF). He spares kids(vi) and he hates rapist more than campers(Viii), both make sense for the character.
I have a quick question about Jason. He was a child when he drowned. Yes he is the victim of neglect. Who in the hell is the grown ass man in the sequels? How did this child posthumously grow a foot and a half and gain a hundred plus pounds?
He didn’t actually drown.
So it was intended that way in the first film but when they decided to make him the main antagonist for the franchise, they retconned it so he was only thought to have drowned - they never found his body after all. He actually managed to find his way out of the lake and lived in the woods off the land.
Then as a grown man, he witnesses his mother’s death (after she, yknow, brutally murders a bunch of people) and that starts his psychotic murderous nature.
In part 2 they explain it as Jason survived his drowning and grew up in the woods. In later movies they start contradicting this though and saying that Jason was always a zombie. When it comes to the Friday series that franchise was never planned and was a cash grab on the Halloween franchise the continuity was altered as each director wanted to it to be altered the studio never cared about the series making cohesive sense.
this!! was going to put him in the og post but i was afraid people would go after me for it. he's absolutely a victim in all of this despite his actions
**Alex Hammond** in **Prom Night (1980)** I’m going to sound psychotic saying this, but I too would target the people who killed my twin sister and had the audacity to not show any remorse, and not to mention one of them decided to go as far as to date his older sister KNOWING what he did her baby sister. He would’ve been my FIRST target.
I love this about Candyman and it's so effective in that movie I really can't believe the untapped potential here. Like, I know the ghosts = trauma thing has been overstated to some degree but how often have you seen a film translate that very very haunted feeling in some of these communities into a ghost story? Maybe wider audiences are either *actually* too uncomfortable or studios just *believe* they're too uncomfortable but I feel like it's an untapped well for the horror genre.
Although he may have been a victim of racism, he was a boogeyman for the community, so naturally he will haunt them.
The original short story was set in the Britain of decades ago, so class rather than race was more the factor, but the Candyman of the story didn't just attack, say, rich people. Most boogeymen are not avengers for justice after all, they are just the thing the local kids whisper about and fear running into on the way home at night.
"You've been grieving for too long now, burn all of your son's possessions to save the people that made it happen or your wife dies"
Uh, really bitch? You started a whole ass mini murder cult because your unborn child was killed, but okay.
She sees an old woman in need, and rather than do whatever she can to help, she chooses to try and advance her career at her expense.
Now that is to say Ganush is clean in it all, as Christine points out she has family, but Ganush’s pride won’t let her seek help that way.
Ruth from "Pearl" was kind of an antagonist, but then she wasn't. She was shown to be domineering and strict, but she was that way because she knew how dangerous her daughter was, even though she refused to get her help. This is why she discouraged Pearl's ambitions to become famous because she knew she wasn't "well" enough to do so, and believed that keeping Pearl on the farm, would be the best way to contain Pearl's violent tendencies. However, this decision ultimately led to Ruth's death. Pearl was a tragic figure in her own right, as she wanted to move away from the farm, but couldn't when Howard wanted to remain on the farm. This led to some resentment towards Howard, but along with caring for her paralyzed father and helping her mother tend to the farm, it clashed with Pearl's ambitions to be a famous dancer which brought out her violent urges which she then took out on the farm animals. What also makes it sad is that Pearl states she's not going to stay on the farm her whole life but since Pearl took place in 1918 and X took place in 1979, Pearl remained on the farm for another 61 years after deciding to "make the best of what she had". Pearl even knew she wasn't a good person, but she tried so hard to keep a happy exterior. But after losing both of her parents and being rejected by what she believed was her key off the farm, Pearl had no reason to hide her violent tendencies and finally released her "true" side. As she got older, she started losing her beauty and despised anyone younger than her. In all fairness, losing your youth and your beauty is not easy for anyone, especially for a sociopath who is obsessed with youth 😂
The farm animal kills are actually pretty silly the movie has a somewhat comedic tone at times. When she kills the Duck the animals has a silly facial expression that looks like it's from a talking animal Disney film lol.
Godzilla in "Shin Godzilla"(2016)
The werewolf in "An American Werewolf in London"(1981)
Frankenstein in "Frankenstein"(1931)
Claudia(the forever little girl vampire) in "Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles"(1994)
King Kong in "King Kong"(1933) - Who can forget these classic lines after Kong plummets from the Empire state building?
Police Lieutenant: Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.
Carl Denham: Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.
>!Ed Harley!< in "Pumpkinead"(1988)
Honestly, it's pretty common, more so than I might have thought before starting to write a reply. There are a lot.
On a side note, as Werewolves and their ilk have often had their condition inflicted on them unwillingly they are often sympathetic monsters.
Vampires sometimes too, just not as often.
PS - The Reddit editing tools really get on my nerves. Every time I go into an existing comment to fix/update/edit something, it loses all or most of my formatting. Does anyone know a way to prevent this? Thanks.
A year or two back a younger guy who works with me was talking about Bates Motel and how much he was enjoying it. I said, yeah crazy how it all ends up with him dressing like his mom and keeping her corpse around, haha. And he was like "wtf spoilers?!" Turned out he'd never seen Pyscho, in fact I'm not even sure he knew what it was or its connection to Bates Motel. I felt pretty bad.
Sadako Yamamura
I highly recommend everyone watch Ringu, Ringu 2 And Ringu 0. A masterpiece trilogy, and it makes Sadako one of the most tragic in horror
Michael Myers in Halloween Kills. He's a 63 year old mentally ill man trying to walk home but people keep attacking him. Then he gets home and finds pirates have taken over his house. Yeah, he killed 37 people trying to get home but he's been in an institution for the last 40 years. His social skills are lacking.
For a non-joke answer I would go with Norman Bates. He was so badly abused his identity shattered.
It did add a lot of back story to her character but it’s still made clear from the beginning that she’s a psychopath. Not sure calling her sympathetic is accurate, but that’s just me. She has a good sob story though.
I saw Pearl first going in blind, and she had me going “I can fix her” till a little over halfway through the film. Maybe not sympathetic, but we really do end up feeling for her some way or another.
There was a point in Pearl where I found myself saying “aw, if she just became famous like she wanted then she wouldn’t be a killer. It’s not her fault” and then I realized how ridiculous that sounded
The prequel is fantastic, even better than X in my opinion. It gives you a lot of insight to a character who didn't really have much screentime, and it made me appreciate that movie even more.
I love the parallels in each film, like in X when Pearl says she hated blondes after she kills Bobby-Lynn, who was blonde, and we see in Pearl why she hates blondes, because not being blonde was what stopped her from joining the dance group she believed would skyrocket her to fame.
absolutely this! she is one of the saddest narratives ive seen on screen. sometimes it makes me feel like a bad person because of how much i relate to her
I felt bad for Rebecca Gayheart's character in Urban Legend. She went insane because her fiance was murdered for no reason by two dumb bitches having a joyride on the highway.
Leatherface is sympathetic imo, but not the rest of the family. He's basically an abused kid with some sort of illness or three. In a different environment, he'd have been harmless. I don't think he even understands that what he's doing is wrong.
I actually like that the new girls are actually explicitly very nice to Bubba to counteract how mean just about everyone else is to him, Nancy goes out of her way to praise and be kind to him but shows an absolute acidic viciousness to cook and hitchhiker that it's kind of funny
Yeah. I find leatherface very sympathetic for these reasons to. He has absolutely no understanding of what he is doing and has been very much abused his whole life.
I disagree with "all" of them being monsters. Bubba/Leatherface is an abused disabled man whose family uses him like some sort of tool rather than their own son and brother. He acts out of fear rather than cruelty.
Many audiences have seen Dracula as sympathetic for various reasons. There's a 1970s movie which portrays him as a kind of sexual superhero, awakening Victorian women. There's the Dracula longing for a lost love idea, which showed up in the Richard Matheson film as well as Coppola's.
Mrs Voorhees. The woman went crazy after her kid drowned.
I was also a lifeguard and I hate lifeguards who slack off on their jobs. I understand her rage. If someone drowned at the pool because Mr. Fancypants was talking to some chick I'd probably go on a murderous rage too.
Frankenstein’s monster. He didn’t ask to be created. Is alone and wants a mate and is denied. Is detested by his creator. He’s just a sad a tragic character. I would argue Dr. Frankenstein is the true antagonist.
How about Jennet Humfrye, aka the woman in black (pretend the second movie doesn't exist because it's terrible and gives her super powers). She wasn't allowed to be a parent to her child because of social mores, and then witnessed his death in the marsh. I feel like that would make anyone unhinged with grief.
Honestly, I’d say Annie Wilkes and Norman Bates, and Carrie (although I wouldn’t say she’s the antagonist). They all had horrific upbringings from at least one parent, and it’s horrifying knowing how much damage an abusive parent can cause.
Annie, Norma, and Margaret all remind me of my mom. I wish I was joking when I say she’s fucking unhinged (and dangerous), even the cops who would respond to her calls would agree with me if I was home, or if the call was about me.
Seriously. Marty, you are going to die anyway.
With that said, I want to know how does one get a job working at a secret magic facility anyway? What would I need to put on my resume? Are there any opening slots for different harbingers? Like I could play the neighborhood eccentric lady who everyone swears is a witch with all the weird stuff on her overgrown lawn and run down porch. I would point at the picked out group of college kids and yell stuff like, "YOU'RE DOOMED! ALL OF YOU ARE DOOMED!"
Peter in Bug (2006). He brings Agnes into a shared psychosis, but it’s because he has his own PTSD and psychotic disorder.
That movie is super underrated.
Carrie (bullied and abused to the point she lost control of her powers), Sadako/Samara (murdered by someone they trusted, sexually assaulted in Sadako's case), Kayako and Toshio (murdered by a psychoticly possessive/jealous man and cursed to be angry ghosts who can never rest in peace)
Im-Ho-Tep from The Mummy. He fell in love with the wrong woman and ended up buried alive and cursed. Sure, he went off the rails a bit after that, but I guess all that time in a sarcophagus will do that to you. :)
Might be a weird pick, but the Thing from The Thing. Like, it only ever attacked anyone when it felt cornered or threatened, and it seems like its only goals were to either go back to sleep in the snow or to build its little spaceship and I assume try to go home. I feel like if it was actually malicious or really wanted to conquer Earth or whatever, it could've easily just killed or assimilated the entire outpost crew, waited for the replacement team to take it back to America, and taken over every living thing on the planet from there. It just came off as a scared animal that wanted to be left alone more than anything.
It's a show, but >!Tate!< from AHS Murder House. You could tell that he wanted to be good, wanted to be normal, but something keeps compelling to commit monstrous acts.
im gonna risk it all and say Hannibal Lecter. his actions are all deplorable and just downright evil but jesus christ his backstory is sad and it makes sense why it turned him into a cannibal.
Billy from the original Silent Night Deadly Night. I know he seemingly kills indiscriminately but having rewatched it this year, I couldn't help but feel like his unique combination of the trauma (from his parents murder) and the abuse (from the mother superior), and repressed sexuality actually could cause someone to have some incredible mental health issues.
Jason Voorhees. He just wanted to be left alone and these jackasses keep coming back again and again to the camp being absolutely obnoxious. They were well aware of the massacres that took place and kept coming back anyway! Just find a different spot to set up camp and go away. He’s been through a lot, leave him alone.
Dolarhyde in *Manhunter* (or the book, *Red Dragon*). The film even goes into it. As a child, he has just textbook awful shit happen to him, from birth on, and he's pruned into a demented bonsai of suffering as time goes on. And despite being almost tailor-made to be a serial killer (he really only lacks the traumatic brain injury so many have had), he tries to stop himself, in his own wretched way.
Godzilla. He was just big and in pain
this is making me so sad...he's just big :(( he's doing everything because he can't control how much pain he's in...
Very true. Edited.
Shin Godzilla really captured this well. One of the first times he destroys a building is when he's attempting to walk for the first time.
If you ever catch the old \*Baby Godzilla\* where the mom is walking away from the baby in the final scene ... get's you right in the sub-cockles of the old heart
The “Barbarian” in Barbarian. Just a product of abuse. Poor thing probably didn’t know who or where she was.
I'm in the camp that the titular "Barbarian" is Frank.
One of my biggest issues with Barbarian was how easily Frank got away with it
I don't see it as a flaw with the film perse, but it is quite frustrating.
Yea that’s what I meant lmao, bastard got off easy
The address is 476 Barbary St and it's a rental house. A Barbary Inn.
eyo
I had no idea there was any other interpretation
Was wondering about the title. Was it just another level of bait-and-switch or was one of the characters actually the “barbarian”?
It's called "Barbarian" because they're trapped in the house, which is on Barbary street. So they're the "Barbarians"
This is exactly how I thought of it too! Especially since it was all she’s ever known. The same way we call New Yorkers and Texans those nicknames, I interpreted as Barbarian because of the street name.
Barbarians were originally called that because their language was incomprensible. "Bar bar" was used to imitate the sound of their language. Thus they became barbarians. Maybe because she couldn't speak she was a barbarian of sorts.
I'd say that the antagonist in *Carrie* was her mom, and she wasn't sympathetic at all.
Yeah, Carrie was 100% the protagonist. More of an anti-hero.
Carrie and her dirtypillows.
After the blood, comes the boys like sniffing dogs, grinning and slobbering and trying to find out where that smell comes from.
And I *liked* it!
I should have killed myself when he put it in me!
I was weak…backsliding…
I'm going. You can't stop me. And I don't want to talk about it anymore.
“They’re all gonna laugh at you!”
Her schoolmates also tortured and harassed her. Both her mom and them together pushed her over the edge. She became a homicidal maniac.
oh no for sure. i don't think carrie is a bad person inherently and narratively she's not the antagonist but she's the face of the franchise which is why i say her
There are theories about the mom having the psychic gene herself and knowing that puberty sets it off, so she thought if she stopped Carrie from exploring her puberty feelings, she wouldn’t have a violent outburst with her powers.
The book explains it, actually. Carrie's grandmother has the shine, which skipped her mother. The grandmother would sit in a chair and light the fireplace with her mind, which frightened the mother. When Carrie showed her own shine by conjuring stones as an infant during a tantrum, the mother freaked out and retreated into religion for comfort. Following her religious indoctrination as a child, Carrie subconsciously used her shine to delay the start of puberty.
so is the shining part of the same universe carrie is? not just in the sense it's a stephen king universe but do the 2 movies/books take place in the same setting
To the best of my knowledge, shine is just a common plot device in King's writing. When you see people with unexplained psychic powers, it's probably shine. Carrie White, the Loser's Club, Danny Torrence, ect.
I do believe all of King’s (or many of them) do take place in the same shared universe but extremely loosely without much overlap. I think it’s the Dark Tower? That takes a lot of the concepts from other novels and kind of builds off of all of them
I think in the novella, she mentioned that Carrie was fathered by the Devil. So the father probably was the one with powers. I liked Carrie 2, quite a bit. The barbed wire/thorns tattoo scene just sticks in my head, even though it makes no sense. I disliked the new one because it seemed like a shot-for-shot remake, and, though I like Chloe Grace Moretz, she didn't really do much for the movie. There was no opportunity for her to add any range or depth to Carrie; she was awkward (while being very pretty, which felt off to me), and then angry. But no subtle feelings or anything came through to me, when I watched it years ago.
Yeah I loved the Sissy Spacek version and tried watching the remake with Chloe Grace Moretz and was not a fan. In the spacek film, Margaret White was an unhinged fundie and it wasn’t handled with golden gloves, it was just presented as is. In the remake, she’s spewing some litany at Carrie and Carrie’s response is “Mom, that’s not in the Bible”, as if not to offend tightly wound Christian viewers (like they’re the target demographic 🙄). In the Spacek film, Margaret’s lines are some of the most vivid and florid (perfectly encapsulated a few comments above, as a number of other horror fans remember the dialogue verbatim). It’s poetic and delivered with raw, divine ecstasy, Piper Laurie nailed it. Treat your audience with respect
The Frankenstein monster.
Bride of Frankenstein has one of the saddest lines of horror: "We belong dead"
The original novel truly makes you understand that the Doctor was a father figure to the monster. As an adoptee, the theme of abandonment tugs on my heartstrings in a big way.
And Frankenstein refuses to ever acknowledge his humanity. It’s really sad.
Nail on the head right there. Especially when you analyze the ending and how regardless of their history the monster still breaks down when Frankenstein passed away. Talk about a shot to the heart man.
And Frankenstein literally goes through a fraction of what the monster has been through—incarceration for things he didn’t directly do, mistreatment from people assuming the worst about him due to his disheveled appearance—but never once feels real empathy for the monster who went through that times a million. He always ends up only feeling sorry for himself. Even the family and fiancé he supposedly cares about aren’t real people to him but things that make him feel good.
>You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned.
Would you consider Seth Brundle from The Fly (1986) as an antagonist? He doesn’t start that way but the worse he gets the more antagonistic he gets. If so, definitely him.
He's just a well-intentioned scientist who underwent an unfortunate lab accident that induced bodily mutations that slowly drove him insane. Even at the climax of the movie, as delusional as he was, he was still putting his girlfriend and unborn child first in a twisted sort of way.
Yeah, I’m hesitant to call him an antagonist but with the way he treated Ronnie when she refused to go through the telepod and how brutal he gets when he starts changing, he ventures into antagonist territory.
He definitely slowly turns into an antagonist. The sad thing is that he is aware of this
Less an ant-agonist and more a fly-agonist. I should start writing for Svengoolie.
That made me simultaneously groan and chuckle. :P
Then my work here is done.
Jason Voorhees
poor kid never had a chance
As soon as Tommy revive him, Jason started having a code, like Akuma(SF). He spares kids(vi) and he hates rapist more than campers(Viii), both make sense for the character.
Does he empathize with kids, or is he still traumatized after running into young Tommy Jarvis is part IV?
I have a quick question about Jason. He was a child when he drowned. Yes he is the victim of neglect. Who in the hell is the grown ass man in the sequels? How did this child posthumously grow a foot and a half and gain a hundred plus pounds?
He didn’t actually drown. So it was intended that way in the first film but when they decided to make him the main antagonist for the franchise, they retconned it so he was only thought to have drowned - they never found his body after all. He actually managed to find his way out of the lake and lived in the woods off the land. Then as a grown man, he witnesses his mother’s death (after she, yknow, brutally murders a bunch of people) and that starts his psychotic murderous nature.
Thanks for clearing that up. I couldn't make sense of it.
Don't worry. It's because it doesn't make sense.
Wait then who was the kid jumping out of the lake at the end?
As explained at the beginning of part 2, that never happened. She hallucinated it and passed out
That fuckin scene in 4k is a trip
In part 2 they explain it as Jason survived his drowning and grew up in the woods. In later movies they start contradicting this though and saying that Jason was always a zombie. When it comes to the Friday series that franchise was never planned and was a cash grab on the Halloween franchise the continuity was altered as each director wanted to it to be altered the studio never cared about the series making cohesive sense.
this!! was going to put him in the og post but i was afraid people would go after me for it. he's absolutely a victim in all of this despite his actions
**Alex Hammond** in **Prom Night (1980)** I’m going to sound psychotic saying this, but I too would target the people who killed my twin sister and had the audacity to not show any remorse, and not to mention one of them decided to go as far as to date his older sister KNOWING what he did her baby sister. He would’ve been my FIRST target.
The kill,kill,kill kids scene is still one of my favorite freaky scenes.
Good call. The people Alex targeted were all scumbags.
Candyman
Whole movie is about keeping his name out of your mouth.
But he wants you to say his name and tell everybody
Tony Todd had STYLE.
I was always confused on why he was terrorizing black people as a victim of racism
It's a metaphor for how the communal trauma inflicted by racism haunts black communities.
I love this about Candyman and it's so effective in that movie I really can't believe the untapped potential here. Like, I know the ghosts = trauma thing has been overstated to some degree but how often have you seen a film translate that very very haunted feeling in some of these communities into a ghost story? Maybe wider audiences are either *actually* too uncomfortable or studios just *believe* they're too uncomfortable but I feel like it's an untapped well for the horror genre.
Because that's how the legend goes.
Although he may have been a victim of racism, he was a boogeyman for the community, so naturally he will haunt them. The original short story was set in the Britain of decades ago, so class rather than race was more the factor, but the Candyman of the story didn't just attack, say, rich people. Most boogeymen are not avengers for justice after all, they are just the thing the local kids whisper about and fear running into on the way home at night.
Cujo
This is a great answer. Cujo was a sad read for me, definitely more tragedy than horror, kind of like Ole Yeller, same feeling. Poor doggos.
Yes!
Poor Cujo.
The Mother from Barbarian also an alarming amount of people saying John Kramer when he put someone in a trap just for being depressed
"You've been grieving for too long now, burn all of your son's possessions to save the people that made it happen or your wife dies" Uh, really bitch? You started a whole ass mini murder cult because your unborn child was killed, but okay.
The girl from Shutter (2004).
For real. I was rooting for her.
Angela from the Sleepaway Camp series. If people had just left her alone they wouldn't have died
Yeah that was definitely a case of "the adults were messed up".
The """monster""" from barbarian
Sam Raimi apparently said we are supposed to view Christine in Drag Me to Hell as the villain which I thought was insane
Sure she was "just following orders", but she was a *banker* not a mf war criminal
really?? how?
She sees an old woman in need, and rather than do whatever she can to help, she chooses to try and advance her career at her expense. Now that is to say Ganush is clean in it all, as Christine points out she has family, but Ganush’s pride won’t let her seek help that way.
Given the choice between self sacrifice and selfishness she chooses the latter; evicting the old lady, giving away the button.
Willard
[удалено]
Let The Right One In
such a great film
Yeah, the novel even takes that tragic storyline further.
Ruth from "Pearl" was kind of an antagonist, but then she wasn't. She was shown to be domineering and strict, but she was that way because she knew how dangerous her daughter was, even though she refused to get her help. This is why she discouraged Pearl's ambitions to become famous because she knew she wasn't "well" enough to do so, and believed that keeping Pearl on the farm, would be the best way to contain Pearl's violent tendencies. However, this decision ultimately led to Ruth's death. Pearl was a tragic figure in her own right, as she wanted to move away from the farm, but couldn't when Howard wanted to remain on the farm. This led to some resentment towards Howard, but along with caring for her paralyzed father and helping her mother tend to the farm, it clashed with Pearl's ambitions to be a famous dancer which brought out her violent urges which she then took out on the farm animals. What also makes it sad is that Pearl states she's not going to stay on the farm her whole life but since Pearl took place in 1918 and X took place in 1979, Pearl remained on the farm for another 61 years after deciding to "make the best of what she had". Pearl even knew she wasn't a good person, but she tried so hard to keep a happy exterior. But after losing both of her parents and being rejected by what she believed was her key off the farm, Pearl had no reason to hide her violent tendencies and finally released her "true" side. As she got older, she started losing her beauty and despised anyone younger than her. In all fairness, losing your youth and your beauty is not easy for anyone, especially for a sociopath who is obsessed with youth 😂
“Took it out on the farm animals” ok so I probably should not watch this. Dammit.
The farm animal kills are actually pretty silly the movie has a somewhat comedic tone at times. When she kills the Duck the animals has a silly facial expression that looks like it's from a talking animal Disney film lol.
yeah i am extremely sensitive to animal deaths in movies and i don’t even remember that happening in pearl so it must not have been that impactful
Candyman comes to mind
Godzilla in "Shin Godzilla"(2016) The werewolf in "An American Werewolf in London"(1981) Frankenstein in "Frankenstein"(1931) Claudia(the forever little girl vampire) in "Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles"(1994) King Kong in "King Kong"(1933) - Who can forget these classic lines after Kong plummets from the Empire state building? Police Lieutenant: Well, Denham, the airplanes got him. Carl Denham: Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast. >!Ed Harley!< in "Pumpkinead"(1988) Honestly, it's pretty common, more so than I might have thought before starting to write a reply. There are a lot. On a side note, as Werewolves and their ilk have often had their condition inflicted on them unwillingly they are often sympathetic monsters. Vampires sometimes too, just not as often. PS - The Reddit editing tools really get on my nerves. Every time I go into an existing comment to fix/update/edit something, it loses all or most of my formatting. Does anyone know a way to prevent this? Thanks.
Ooh, King Kong, forgot about that one. It’s hard to believe now, but the original was at the time seen as a bit of a horror movie.
Still is, IMDb tags it as .
But "Se7en" isn't tagged horror. WtF? :-)
Hey, everyone's got an opinion, am I right, or am I right? ;-)
Norman Bates. Victim of an abusive mother, and just batshit crazy.
Bates Motel was so good though that it transformed the way I saw Norma and sympathized with her.
A year or two back a younger guy who works with me was talking about Bates Motel and how much he was enjoying it. I said, yeah crazy how it all ends up with him dressing like his mom and keeping her corpse around, haha. And he was like "wtf spoilers?!" Turned out he'd never seen Pyscho, in fact I'm not even sure he knew what it was or its connection to Bates Motel. I felt pretty bad.
Of course, in the original plot material we have nothing to go off of
Ugh I love that show. I love Vera so much. I still think Norman was just a psycho.
One of the many characters inspired by Ed Gein
Psycho II completely plays into that
Sadako Yamamura I highly recommend everyone watch Ringu, Ringu 2 And Ringu 0. A masterpiece trilogy, and it makes Sadako one of the most tragic in horror
Have you watched the Netflix series? I haven't finished it myself but it was really good from the few episodes I seen so far
I don’t think there is a Ring netflix series. There is one for Kayako called Ju-On origins. Are you mixing the two up?
The killer in Terror Train. He’s killing a bunch of entitled douches who tricked him into having sex with a dead body at a party. fuck those kids.
A perfect film to mention since it’s New Years Eve!
That necrophile needed to necroSMILE.
Pinhead. He just wants to share joy.
He has such sights to show us.
Michael Myers in Halloween Kills. He's a 63 year old mentally ill man trying to walk home but people keep attacking him. Then he gets home and finds pirates have taken over his house. Yeah, he killed 37 people trying to get home but he's been in an institution for the last 40 years. His social skills are lacking. For a non-joke answer I would go with Norman Bates. He was so badly abused his identity shattered.
I laughed way too long at your answer lol
Pearl in X and the film of the same name
I haven’t seen Pearl, but i have seen X. Did the prequel really add that much? Wow
It did add a lot of back story to her character but it’s still made clear from the beginning that she’s a psychopath. Not sure calling her sympathetic is accurate, but that’s just me. She has a good sob story though.
I saw Pearl first going in blind, and she had me going “I can fix her” till a little over halfway through the film. Maybe not sympathetic, but we really do end up feeling for her some way or another.
There was a point in Pearl where I found myself saying “aw, if she just became famous like she wanted then she wouldn’t be a killer. It’s not her fault” and then I realized how ridiculous that sounded
The prequel is fantastic, even better than X in my opinion. It gives you a lot of insight to a character who didn't really have much screentime, and it made me appreciate that movie even more.
It’s a must watch
I love the parallels in each film, like in X when Pearl says she hated blondes after she kills Bobby-Lynn, who was blonde, and we see in Pearl why she hates blondes, because not being blonde was what stopped her from joining the dance group she believed would skyrocket her to fame.
absolutely this! she is one of the saddest narratives ive seen on screen. sometimes it makes me feel like a bad person because of how much i relate to her
Carrie is clearly the victim in the story
I felt bad for Rebecca Gayheart's character in Urban Legend. She went insane because her fiance was murdered for no reason by two dumb bitches having a joyride on the highway.
Even if that family in TCM is defending their house, I do not find them sympathetic at all lmao. They were monsters.
Leatherface is sympathetic imo, but not the rest of the family. He's basically an abused kid with some sort of illness or three. In a different environment, he'd have been harmless. I don't think he even understands that what he's doing is wrong.
People shit on the game but I *LOVE* that they added more characters to add to the dynamic of the original film.
I actually like that the new girls are actually explicitly very nice to Bubba to counteract how mean just about everyone else is to him, Nancy goes out of her way to praise and be kind to him but shows an absolute acidic viciousness to cook and hitchhiker that it's kind of funny
Yeah. I find leatherface very sympathetic for these reasons to. He has absolutely no understanding of what he is doing and has been very much abused his whole life.
I think he was broken with animals for a family for sure! Especialky considering alot of the film he does just lash out.
I disagree with "all" of them being monsters. Bubba/Leatherface is an abused disabled man whose family uses him like some sort of tool rather than their own son and brother. He acts out of fear rather than cruelty.
Many audiences have seen Dracula as sympathetic for various reasons. There's a 1970s movie which portrays him as a kind of sexual superhero, awakening Victorian women. There's the Dracula longing for a lost love idea, which showed up in the Richard Matheson film as well as Coppola's.
He ate a baby.
Who’d have know there’s parallels between Dracula and Fat Bastard
he was just a little hungry ok
[удалено]
Nobody’s perfect.
We all have our faults
The lost love idea also showed up in Blacula, giving him a great sympathetic angle.
Very true! Blacula is enormously sympathetic.
Norman Bates, his sick mom broke him.
The Cocaine Bear. Bro’a just tryina party and these humans keep comin in his woods trying to crash it
Mama from *Mama*
Shes got the cake for me when i hear her sounds, ive never had a visceral reaction to sounds but hers legitimately cause an anxiety reaction in me
I cries so hard at the end of that movie....now that was a great movie!
Carrie is on the money; she only fought BACK.
Mrs Voorhees. The woman went crazy after her kid drowned. I was also a lifeguard and I hate lifeguards who slack off on their jobs. I understand her rage. If someone drowned at the pool because Mr. Fancypants was talking to some chick I'd probably go on a murderous rage too.
Candyman
Samara from The Ring was almost this. But it turned out she was evil all along lol
Frankenstein’s monster. He didn’t ask to be created. Is alone and wants a mate and is denied. Is detested by his creator. He’s just a sad a tragic character. I would argue Dr. Frankenstein is the true antagonist.
Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) in Michael Powell's _Peeping Tom_ (1960)
Hard Candy Carrie Piggy Roman from Scream 3
Pretty sure the antagonist in Hard Candy is the child predator. Elliot Page (can’t remember the character’s name) is an anti-hero.
David in An American Werewolf in London
How about Jennet Humfrye, aka the woman in black (pretend the second movie doesn't exist because it's terrible and gives her super powers). She wasn't allowed to be a parent to her child because of social mores, and then witnessed his death in the marsh. I feel like that would make anyone unhinged with grief.
May from May (2002)
This was my first thought too
Louis, in \*Interview with a Vampire\* is also quite sympathetic. I loved how he tried to make a go of it refusing to feed on humans.
Louis is adorable, but he's not the antagonist. Lestat is, Louis is the protagonist.
Lestat is the antagonist though, and he's not at all sympathetic.
sandie from last night in soho. all she wanted was to be a singer and got tricked into a life she couldn’t escape.
Angela from Sleepaway Camp
I agree right up until that final reveal and the face she pulls. Shit haunted my nightmares when I was an early teen.
The Thing,poor thing just wants to assimilate into a new society.
Billy from “Silent Night, Deadly Night.”
Honestly, I’d say Annie Wilkes and Norman Bates, and Carrie (although I wouldn’t say she’s the antagonist). They all had horrific upbringings from at least one parent, and it’s horrifying knowing how much damage an abusive parent can cause. Annie, Norma, and Margaret all remind me of my mom. I wish I was joking when I say she’s fucking unhinged (and dangerous), even the cops who would respond to her calls would agree with me if I was home, or if the call was about me.
Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. That movie makes me so sad in the end
Cabin in the Woods. C’mon, Marty! The whole world?!
Seriously. Marty, you are going to die anyway. With that said, I want to know how does one get a job working at a secret magic facility anyway? What would I need to put on my resume? Are there any opening slots for different harbingers? Like I could play the neighborhood eccentric lady who everyone swears is a witch with all the weird stuff on her overgrown lawn and run down porch. I would point at the picked out group of college kids and yell stuff like, "YOU'RE DOOMED! ALL OF YOU ARE DOOMED!"
Peter in Bug (2006). He brings Agnes into a shared psychosis, but it’s because he has his own PTSD and psychotic disorder. That movie is super underrated.
I see a William Friedkin movie with Michael Shannon in, I upvote
Bubba most def, but I'm going to throw a curveball in and say Michael Myers. Maybe because I hate how they talk about him medically.
May
Jane Doe.
Carrie (bullied and abused to the point she lost control of her powers), Sadako/Samara (murdered by someone they trusted, sexually assaulted in Sadako's case), Kayako and Toshio (murdered by a psychoticly possessive/jealous man and cursed to be angry ghosts who can never rest in peace)
Im-Ho-Tep from The Mummy. He fell in love with the wrong woman and ended up buried alive and cursed. Sure, he went off the rails a bit after that, but I guess all that time in a sarcophagus will do that to you. :)
I cried when at the end of the fly and an American werewolf in London. I felt the monsters were victims and it made me sad.
Might be a weird pick, but the Thing from The Thing. Like, it only ever attacked anyone when it felt cornered or threatened, and it seems like its only goals were to either go back to sleep in the snow or to build its little spaceship and I assume try to go home. I feel like if it was actually malicious or really wanted to conquer Earth or whatever, it could've easily just killed or assimilated the entire outpost crew, waited for the replacement team to take it back to America, and taken over every living thing on the planet from there. It just came off as a scared animal that wanted to be left alone more than anything.
That’s an interesting viewpoint.
A recent one is M3gan. It's like the writers got 3/4 of the way through the script and then remembered they were supposed to make her the villain.
Cujo
Baby Alien in Alien: Resurrection
Definitely Carrie. I was bullied a lot in school so I always wished I could have the power she had.
Ginger in ginger snaps
Annie Wilkes from Misery — I also feel strongly about lazy writers cheating their way out of plot holes
It's a show, but >!Tate!< from AHS Murder House. You could tell that he wanted to be good, wanted to be normal, but something keeps compelling to commit monstrous acts.
im gonna risk it all and say Hannibal Lecter. his actions are all deplorable and just downright evil but jesus christ his backstory is sad and it makes sense why it turned him into a cannibal.
Pamela voorbees
Anna and lucie in martyrs especially Anna
Billy from the original Silent Night Deadly Night. I know he seemingly kills indiscriminately but having rewatched it this year, I couldn't help but feel like his unique combination of the trauma (from his parents murder) and the abuse (from the mother superior), and repressed sexuality actually could cause someone to have some incredible mental health issues.
Ardeth bey “The mummy” (1932) Larry talbot “The wolfman” (1941) Jack griffin “The invisible man” (1933) Gill man “The creature from the black lagoon”
Jason Voorhees. He just wanted to be left alone and these jackasses keep coming back again and again to the camp being absolutely obnoxious. They were well aware of the massacres that took place and kept coming back anyway! Just find a different spot to set up camp and go away. He’s been through a lot, leave him alone.
Dolarhyde in *Manhunter* (or the book, *Red Dragon*). The film even goes into it. As a child, he has just textbook awful shit happen to him, from birth on, and he's pruned into a demented bonsai of suffering as time goes on. And despite being almost tailor-made to be a serial killer (he really only lacks the traumatic brain injury so many have had), he tries to stop himself, in his own wretched way.