Last Updated on July 26, 2021
This week it’s time to get down with some of the best beginnings in horror. The Origin Story has become a major cliche, but when done right it’s still an absolute pleasure.
Sometimes the backstory has to do with events that created a great monster, other times it’s just an ultra cool breeding
story. Either way, origins are a great way to add depth to a flick, and occasionally give us a tick more sympathy for our villain.
Since there are nearly as many of these look backs as there are movies in the genre, this list by definition will have to miss some good ones. Don’t be scared to spit bullets on anything you think should have made it.
This cruel piece of work ends with our killer having performed a lo tech C-section on the protagonist. While the real mother lies bleeding to death on her staircase, the killer sits with stolen baby looking like she’s going to get away with all this madness. And the reason? Simple but brutal. The killer was pregnant and lost her baby in a car accident with the mother she literally just took apart. Not fun, but compelling nevertheless.
We get various origin stories for the Cenobites throughout the whole Hellraiser series, and technically the second is probably the most instructive in that department. But no matter how you break it down, the overall message is that if you are a sick enough sunuvabitch that all the freaky shite this world offers no longer moves you, then there is a place that will take you to a whole level of pleasure and pain you could never imagine. Although honestly it all pretty much looked like pain to me.
As lifecycle origins go this is easily the top of the heap. We’re all so familiar with the process that it’s easy to lose sight of what a phenomenal creation we have here. Egg to face hugger. Face hugger to implanted symbiote. Implanted symbiote to full blown Alien. It’s a master class in how to tweak some of the natural world’s more creative relationships and create a monster than truly terrifies on every conceivable level.
I would guess that if as a young child I found my father in bed with another man, and then had the misfortune to be raised as a girl even though I was a boy, I’d probably be pretty f*cked up too. It’s difficult to feel anything other than sympathy for Angela/Peter, because any time you have to use he/she to refer to one person you’re likely dealing with a highly confused individual. I get annoyed as everyone else by it’s the parents’ fault explanations, but in this case IT WAS THE PARENTS’ FAULT!
A classic example of the phrase oldie but goodie, is there any more famous origin story than that of Frankenstein’s monster? Nope. This sucker has been done, re-done, satirized, reborn, rebooted, and given any other treatment you can think of. And why not? It’s a f*cking doozy. Stitch together the body parts of multiple corpses, plug in the brain of a criminal, and then add lightening. It almost seems reasonable that you could make that shite work. Almost.
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