It’s a tale as old as the movies
itself. Man does something stupid, or brilliant, or brilliantly stupid, and
finds/discovers/invents/stumbles across a monster, and then spends the rest of
the movie trying not to get eaten.
I’m not talking about Japanese Kaiju
movies, although they are certainly a part of the larger discussion (and, FYI,
will get their own Top 5 List at a later date). I’m referring to the things
that are larger than humans, but smaller than Godzilla. Or, optionally,
man-sized, but far from man-like. The monster in question doesn’t have to be a
giant animal; indeed, the best of this type of movie are monster that never
were, or thought to have been myths, or just plain aliens.
There’s also a hunter versus hunted
component to this kind of movie. Whatever is chasing us for food triggers these
primal fears within us that we typically suppress. As a country that is
mythically saturated by a fear of the unknown, the Other, the Outer Darkness,
these movies are at their biggest and best the every thing our ancestors feared
when they huddled in their cabins for warmth. Our cabins are way better now,
with wi-fi and air conditioning, but the fear never really goes away.
