2014: The Year in Creatures
The Oscars are tonight. I don't really care too much about them any year, and this year is no different, mostly because I haven't seen the vast majority of the movies that are nominated for anything, so I can't have much of an opinion either way. About the only category where I have a horse in the race is Best Animated Feature, where I'm hoping Big Hero 6 takes home the statue it so richly deserves, though I'm thinking that How to Train Your Dragon 2 will probably win it as an apology Oscar for snubbing its predecessor back in 2010.
I'm not here to talk about the Oscars, though. I'm here to talk about the year in movie monsters. I'm a little late with what will be my third annual Year in Creatures, but I honestly held off this long because I just kept thinking that there must have been more good monsters in movies in 2014 than I had yet seen, and that any moment I would stumble upon them, but as the Oscars are upon us and we're now well into 2015, I think I've just got to acknowledge that 2014 wasn't a very good year for movie monsters, and call it a day. (We can't have a Pacific Rim every year, after all.)
This year followed the established pattern that the majority of screen creatures were not in horror or monster movies at all, but rather in big budget sci-fi, superhero, and fantasy spectacles. There were a few non-ghost monsters in lower budget horror films, but of those, few were especially memorable, and even the fantasy epics this year tended toward generic critters, with some exceptions coming in the form of the aliens from Edge of Tomorrow, the surprisingly decent MUTOs from the otherwise lackluster Godzilla, and, if they can truly count as creatures, the future Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The only creature to really give this year's winner a run for its money, though, was the breakout star of Guardians of the Galaxy, Groot. Who might have been monster of the year had it not been for...
The Babadook
While the film itself was one of the year's better horror films, don't get me wrong, it suffered a bit from overhype and a somewhat weak third act. But the titular monster stole the show, with its combination of silent movie aesthetics and a Pokemon-esque tendency to say its own name. (Particularly effective in a chilling phone call scene.)
Would the Babadook have been able to hold its own in a year with stronger monster representation? Who can say. All I know is, two months into 2015, it's still my pick for last year's Movie Monster of the Year.
I'm not here to talk about the Oscars, though. I'm here to talk about the year in movie monsters. I'm a little late with what will be my third annual Year in Creatures, but I honestly held off this long because I just kept thinking that there must have been more good monsters in movies in 2014 than I had yet seen, and that any moment I would stumble upon them, but as the Oscars are upon us and we're now well into 2015, I think I've just got to acknowledge that 2014 wasn't a very good year for movie monsters, and call it a day. (We can't have a Pacific Rim every year, after all.)
This year followed the established pattern that the majority of screen creatures were not in horror or monster movies at all, but rather in big budget sci-fi, superhero, and fantasy spectacles. There were a few non-ghost monsters in lower budget horror films, but of those, few were especially memorable, and even the fantasy epics this year tended toward generic critters, with some exceptions coming in the form of the aliens from Edge of Tomorrow, the surprisingly decent MUTOs from the otherwise lackluster Godzilla, and, if they can truly count as creatures, the future Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The only creature to really give this year's winner a run for its money, though, was the breakout star of Guardians of the Galaxy, Groot. Who might have been monster of the year had it not been for...
The Babadook
While the film itself was one of the year's better horror films, don't get me wrong, it suffered a bit from overhype and a somewhat weak third act. But the titular monster stole the show, with its combination of silent movie aesthetics and a Pokemon-esque tendency to say its own name. (Particularly effective in a chilling phone call scene.)
Would the Babadook have been able to hold its own in a year with stronger monster representation? Who can say. All I know is, two months into 2015, it's still my pick for last year's Movie Monster of the Year.