25 best horror movie monsters

14. The Babadook

Many monsters are very real, physical creatures. Godzilla and the graboids can wreak serious property damage in a town or city. Pinhead and the Cenobites can transport you to a very real hell dimension. The Thing can take over your very body and transform you into a horror from another world.

Yet, some monsters are almost entirely psychological. That is to say, they live within your head or the minds of others. But don’t let that fool you. It could very well be that these monsters are some of the deadliest and most frightening of all.

Take the 2014 film The Babadook, for instance. This Australian-Canadian horror movie, written and directed by Jennifer Kent, stars Essie Davis as Amelia Vanek, an incredibly stressed single mother and widow. She’s trying her best to raise Sam, her six-year-old son, but his increasingly erratic behavior and health problems are beginning to take down Amelia’s already shaky foundation.

That’s all bad enough, but then the pair begins to experience some strange events. At first, it’s almost nothing – doors that appear to open and close on their own, odd noises in the house, bits of glass in Amelia’s food. It could almost be attributed to the oddities of an old home and some serious sleep deprivation.

But then a strange book about a “Mister Babadook” appears. Amelia becomes increasingly paranoid and isolated. She and Sam begin to actually see this Mister Babadook, a tall figure with a dark coat and hat, along with a ghoulishly white face. Thankfully, the pair makes it through the movie whole, but not before some serious menacing from a monster that may very well reside within their own minds.