In the spirit of Halloween, here is a look at the history of the movie monster, who has changed over time, even as the mechanics of the horror movie have remained fairly constant.
• The traditional monster: The bogeymen of Universal Studio’s black-and-white classics — the Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein — were monster-men hybrids, part human and part freaks of nature. Their fangs and fur were metaphors for something monstrous within ourselves.
• The man with the knife: Gradually, these beasts gave way to a monster who looked a lot more like us: the deranged slasher. Killers such as Norman Bates, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers were deformed — figuratively and literally — but still profoundly human. The monster was now a man who merely behaved like a beast.
• The man in the mirror: More recently, the monster outside the window has moved inside the house. In movies from “The Shining” to “Goodnight Mommy,” the bogeyman in the bedroom now looks a lot like Daddy or Mommy — or even us. Today’s movie monster is often something we can’t see, epitomized by such found-footage films as “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity.” Maybe that’s because, as with the unhinged mother of the “Babadook,” the modern monster is something we have created, out of our own troubled psyches.
