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We never set eyes upon these horror movie characters.
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00:00Horror movies are typically concerned with unnerving the viewer by any means necessary,
00:04and what can be easier than doing it through visual means. By showing the audience something
00:09inherently unsettling or disturbing, a film can push their buttons and ensure they never forget
00:15what they're seeing. But horror can also stem just as much from what we don't see. After all,
00:20Steven Spielberg's Jaws is one of the greatest horror films of all time, despite the shark only
00:24being featured briefly throughout. Yet these horror movies all one-upped that by featuring
00:30prominent, notable characters who are never actually physically seen once within the film
00:36itself. Perhaps they're ghostly villains who are invisible, entities capable of possessing human
00:42hosts, or even heroic characters who are only spoken about but never seen for one reason or another.
00:48Whatever the circumstances, these notable characters are all never seen in their respective
00:54movies, no matter the often huge impact they have on the story overall. It's a testament to the
01:01filmmaking that these characters all feel present, even though we're never afforded an opportunity
01:07to actually look at them. I'm Sean Ferrick for WhatCultureHorror, and here is our list of horror
01:13movie characters we never see. The Child Narrator – Weapons
01:18Zach Greger's stunning new horror film Weapons is bookended by narration from a young girl who
01:25provides crucial context for the beginning and end of the story. And yet, this girl is never actually
01:31featured as an on-screen character, and the film makes little effort to explain who she might actually
01:36be. The voiceover is provided by young actress Scarlett Shur, who is credited only as narrator. And while some
01:45have understandably speculated that the girl may very well attend Maybrook Elementary School, where all
01:50the children disappear, Shur herself doesn't seem to appear in the movie, not even as a background artist.
01:57The narration makes it clear that the girl is a local to the town of Maybrook, and Kreger's original
02:04script refers to her as an 11 year old girl called Maddie, but that's about it. Honestly, it's probably better
02:11off this way. Kreger's film delights in its eerie ambiguities and trusting the audience to figure
02:17things out for themselves, so why mess that up by stripping all the mystery away?
02:22The Entity – The Entity The criminally underappreciated 1982 horror film The Entity revolves
02:29around Carla Moran, a single mother who finds herself repeatedly terrorised and sexually assaulted by an
02:35invisible poltergeist-like entity. The Entity is never directly envisaged on screen, requiring the
02:41production to employ cutting-edge and impressively well-aged effects work to show the Force attacking
02:47Carla in her own home. More to the point, the Entity's invisibility makes it infuriatingly difficult
02:53for Carla to prove what's happening to her to the authorities, ensuring that she's initially dismissed
02:58as mentally ill or attention-seeking. Though the Entity does manifest energy by way of terrifying
03:04electrical discharges, we never actually see its own distinct form. The fact that we never see its
03:10actual body, only the impact it has on the environment as it moves around, frankly makes
03:15it that much scarier. And to make matters worse, the film ends without Carla ever decisively
03:22triumphing over the Force, the final scene only noting that the attacks have become less common
03:28and intense. Pablo – Wreck By their sheer nature, found footage movies don't often show too much of the
03:36person operating the camera, though usually they'll at least be glimpsed in a mirror or another character
03:42will take hold of the camera for a little while to give them some face time. But in the case
03:46of the
03:47classic Spanish horror Wreck, cameraman Pablo isn't properly seen once during the entire film. The focus
03:55is solely on news reporter protagonist Angela Vidal, and considering that Pablo is literally a cameraman for
04:02the news, he's probably totally used to that being the case. Hell, even when Pablo is beaten to death
04:07and devoured by the mutated, infected Tristana Medeiros, at the end we don't get any sort of sustained
04:14look at him. The most we ever see are quick glimpses of his hands and feet, but never his face.
04:20This
04:20makes a certain amount of sense when you consider that the film's camera operator was its cinematographer,
04:27Pablo Rosa, who presumably played Pablo because it was easier than training a real actor to operate the camera.
04:34The baby. Rosemary's baby. Despite Roman Polanski's incredible 1968 horror film Rosemary's baby being
04:40centered entirely around the impending spawn of Rosemary, we never actually get to see the baby once they're
04:47born. In the movie's unforgettably bleak ending, Rosemary discovers that her child has been kidnapped by a
04:53demonic coven. And more to the point, the father of her child isn't her husband Guy, but rather Satan
04:59himself. Rosemary is left terrified at her son's eyes, yet we as the audience never see this for
05:06ourselves. We're only left to watch in horror as she reluctantly mothers her son, the apparent
05:11Antichrist. It goes without saying that nothing a movie can show will ever quite live up to what we
05:17can conjure in our own minds. For more than 50 years, viewers have pondered what Rosemary's son
05:23actually looked like. And Rosemary's distraught reaction face really says it all. Plus, there's the
05:30obvious practical concern of giving a young baby demonic eyes. You probably wouldn't be able to fit
05:35a baby with contact lenses. And in 1968, optical effects were a risky bet for something like this.
05:42All things considered, not showing the baby was definitely the right way to go.
05:48Christina Carpenter, Scream 2022. The fifth Scream film introduced audiences to new protagonists,
05:55Sam Carpenter and her sister Tara, with Sam later revealed to be the daughter of ghostface killer
06:00Billy Loomis, who had an affair with Sam and Tara's mother, Christina, in high school. Despite the impact
06:06of this revelation on Sam's arc throughout the fifth and sixth films, Christina isn't seen
06:12in either film, being away on a business trip during the events of Scream 5, and then estranged
06:18from both of her daughters by Scream 6. Many fans initially suspected that Christina would finally
06:24be introduced in Scream 7, but with both Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega ultimately both exiting the
06:30sequel, it's safe to say that any potential plans for her are now kaput. Some even went so far as
06:36to
06:36speculate that Christina could be a killer in a future Scream film. But considering the possibility that we
06:42may never see Sam or Tara again in the franchise, Christina may forever be a character who audiences
06:47simply don't meet.
06:492. Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me
06:52Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me is enigmatic, even for the standards of the late great David Lynch,
06:59and sort of introduces audiences to the character of Judy. Judy is first mentioned by Special Agent
07:05Philip Jeffries during his memorable scene at the FBI Regional Headquarters in Philadelphia, where he
07:12rocks up and immediately starts insisting that he won't be talking about Judy. With that, Jeffries
07:17vanishes. And that's the last direct word we hear about Judy in the film, who was never once elaborated
07:23upon or physically seen. The implication is that Judy is a malevolent force of some kind, and while
07:30Lynch's sequel series, Twin Peaks The Return, continued to follow the Judy thread, we never got
07:36explicit confirmation that any of the entities seen throughout the series were 100% Judy. And now
07:43that Lynch has tragically passed, in turn bringing the possibility of future Twin Peaks stories to an
07:48end, her concrete appearance will remain a mystery forevermore. Then again, that eerie uncertainty possesses
07:55its own kind of staying power. Dan Brenner, Buried. The brilliance of 2010's horror thriller Buried is
08:03that the entire film only shows one single character on screen, the ill-fated American truck driver Paul
08:09Conroy, who ends up buried alive in a wooden coffin while working in Iraq. Though the film is basically
08:15the Ryan Reynolds show, he does speak with numerous other characters over the phone, most prominently
08:21Dan Brenner, the head of the hostage working group who attempts to locate Paul to save him before it's
08:28too late. And while audiences might expect that they'll get to see Dan at the triumphant end of
08:34the movie when Paul is inevitably rescued, that isn't quite what happens. In a devastating twist ending,
08:41Dan actually isn't able to rescue Paul in time, leaving him to be suffocated to death as the coffin is
08:47filled with sand, and all Dan can do is profusely apologize for not making it. Keeping the camera
08:53in the coffin with Paul the entire time makes his isolation that much more palpable, and having his
09:01only possibility of salvation be a remote disembodied voice we can never put a face to only further
09:07hammers that point home. Billy Black Christmas. 1974's Black Christmas doesn't get nearly enough credit for
09:14being one of the earliest and most innovative slasher films, nor for featuring such a terrifying
09:20antagonist, despite the fact that we never get a clear look at him. The film follows a group of
09:25sorority sisters who are stalked and killed by a shadowy man known only as Billy, whose face and
09:31body are never conclusively shown to the audience. Director Bob Clark does a fantastic job of blanketing
09:37Billy in shadow, such that we never see more than a limb or an eye peering out of the dark.
09:43This, combined with the character's lack of a clear motive, makes him stand out among slasher film
09:50antagonists, leaving him something of a blank slate for audiences to project their own fears and anxieties
09:56onto. Though his lack of palpable screen presence has made him less iconic than, say, Michael Myers,
10:02and probably explains why Black Christmas 2 never happened, it's ultimately an artistic choice that's
10:07aged incredibly well more than 50 years later. Paimon Hereditary. Over the course of Ari Aster's
10:16mesmerizing horror masterpiece, Hereditary, we learn that a coven is plotting to resurrect
10:21the demon King Paimon, who requires a male body to serve as his host. The coven decides upon Annie's
10:27son, Peter, and at the end of the movie, Peter does indeed appear to become possessed by King Paimon,
10:32completing the coven's plan. Yet, we never actually behold Paimon's true form physically on screen,
10:39though we see a picture of Paimon in a book, and occasionally glimpse strange glowing light
10:44when something supernatural is happening. That's it. This is likely a combination of both practical and
10:51artistic decision making. For one, it'd be tough to show Paimon on a screen for a 10 million dollar
10:57budget, and the potential for him to look absolutely ridiculous speaks for itself. Having him instead
11:03operate through human vessels was definitely the smart play here, all while the audience is left to
11:09ponder what the newly resurrected demon King will do with his new human body. The Entity. The Endless.
11:18Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's terrific sci-fi horror film The Endless follows two brothers who
11:24revisit an apparent cult to which they belonged as children. After arriving, Justin becomes convinced
11:30that he's being observed by an invisible entity, and it's revealed later in the film that a strange
11:36unseen cosmic force is trapping people in time loops for its own seemingly perverse amusement. Though the
11:43brothers do eventually find various structures which show different possible interpretations of what the
11:49entity looks like, the film never gives a fixed account of its true form. Given that The Endless firmly
11:57follows the Lovecraftian tradition of introducing an entity which defies conventional human comprehension,
12:04once being described as made of impossible colours, it's fitting that we as the audience are never shown
12:11what it looks like. After all, when a creature is built up so much, a physical reveal is almost
12:17certainly destined to be a disappointment. Azazel Fallen. The massively underrated 1998 horror-thriller
12:26Fallen stars Denzel Washington as John Hobbs, a dogged Philadelphia detective who investigates a
12:32series of killings which resemble the MO of a recently executed serial killer, Edgar Rees. As it turns out,
12:39Hobbs is actually pursuing a demonic fallen angel by the name of Azazel, who harbours the ability to possess
12:46anyone he touches, allowing him to effectively hop from host to host to continue his killing spree when
12:52the heat closes in on him. And so by his sheer nature, we never actually see Azazel as a pure
12:58demon
12:58in the film, simply the many, many hosts he inhabits throughout the story to provoke Hobbs, including
13:05ultimately himself, in the film's bonkers climax. Though chilling first-person shots do a fantastic job of
13:12lending Azazel an otherworldly quality, Fallen quite smartly decides not to give us a CGI rendition of his true
13:19form, the goofy potential of which speaks for itself. Death, Final Destination. The Final Destination
13:25franchise revolves around hapless people being chased down by death itself, a force capable of extreme
13:32punishment, and yet which is never physically depicted on screen as a tangible being, thankfully. Now, it's absolutely worth
13:39pointing out that the series has occasionally depicted the vague essence of death by way of shadowy shapes
13:45moving around, but it's also quite sensibly never committed to showing death without ambiguity. For many years,
13:53it was a popular fan theory that mortician William Bloodworth was actually the personification of death, hence his
13:59intimate knowledge of how death operates. But the most recent sequel, Final Destination Bloodlines, quite
14:06categorically proved that not to be true in an incredibly moving final performance from actor Tony
14:13Todd. Given the enormous potential for a physical rendition of death to come off as obscenely silly,
14:19especially this far into the film franchise, the filmmakers would be best to stick to what works,
14:25keeping death an intangible force pulling the strings from behind the curtain.
14:30He who walks behind the rose, children of the corn, 1984. Sometimes it's so tricky to do full justice to
14:38an entity described on the written page that it's better to just not bother at all. And that was quite
14:43sensibly the case with the 1984 adaptation of Stephen King's short story, Children of the Corn. The
14:49focal religious cult worships a bloodthirsty deity known as he who walks behind the rose, but the creature is
14:55never once shown, its presence instead being implied through shadows, movement amid the cornfields, and
15:02so on. Considering the film's mere three million dollar budget, it was certainly a smart choice,
15:07and one that's been absolutely vindicated by the franchise's later attempts to show he who walks
15:13behind the rose on screen. Children of the Corn 3 Urban Harvest misguidedly depicted it as a comical
15:20worm-like creature, and 2020's risable remake envisioned it as a lo-fi CGI monster that's
15:27perhaps best described as what you get when you order Groot from Wish. Given that Children of the
15:32Corn revolves around a cult of murderous children, there should be plenty to sustain the audience's
15:37interest. Let he who walks stay out of sight.
15:44The original 1951 The Thing From Another World is decidedly tamer than John Carpenter's 1982 remake,
15:51with many of the deaths at the hands of the plant-based alien creature taking place off screen.
15:56This is true of two doctor characters, Olsen and Airback, who are said to have been discovered hanging
16:03from the greenhouse with their throats cut and their bodies drained of blood by the alien. But while it's
16:09not terribly surprising that a 1951 film doesn't depict The Thing's rampage as graphically as
16:15Carpenter's remake did three decades later, what is more surprising here is that we never actually see
16:21Olsen or Airback at all. That's right, we never meet these characters before their demise, and so the
16:28audience likely isn't inspired to care much about them being killed. Even if the film couldn't show them
16:35dying, it might have been worth giving them a scene or two on screen before dispatching them, especially
16:42as they're the two only human casualties in the entire movie. The Aliens The Fourth Kind
16:49Aliens are extremely tough to pull off well, especially in a lower-budget horror film like The Fourth
16:56Kind. And so, filmmaker Olatunde Osun Sanmi was absolutely smart to keep things vague. Despite
17:04being panned by critics upon release, the film has won itself something of a cult following in the years
17:09since, largely due to its faux documentary framing and, admittedly, unsettling style. Crucially, though
17:15the presence of the Aliens is consistently felt throughout the film by way of shadows and flashes of
17:21light, they're never shown in plain view and often concealed under degraded video footage. It's an
17:27approach that definitely left many frustrated when The Fourth Kind was first released back in 2009,
17:33but it also likely prevented the film from collapsing in on itself with a potentially hokey extraterrestrial
17:40reveal. It's still not a great movie, despite its fans, though this was definitely the right creative call.
17:48Ken Loney, Pontypool. Bruce McDonald's terrifically inventive Pontypool is set primarily in a radio
17:55station as shock jock Grant Mazze receives calls and transmissions about a deadly viral outbreak
18:02of a virus that spreads through the English language itself. With its setting largely confined to the
18:09radio station, most of Pontypool unfolds very much like a radio play, which makes total sense given that
18:15filmmakers have cited Orson Welles' iconic radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds as a major
18:20inspiration on the story. And while the characters do come and go from the station, there's one pivotal
18:26person we never get to see, helicopter reporter Ken Loney. Ken repeatedly calls Grant to report on the
18:34mayhem taking place in the town, painting a vivid picture of the outbreak and in turn serving as a vital
18:40lifeline to the station. However, Ken ends up succumbing to the virus later on, and though we never
18:47see him once throughout the movie, his loss is certainly still felt by the audience.
18:53The creators of the Cube. Cube. 1997's cult classic horror Cube follows a group of seven people who wake
19:01up trapped inside a labyrinth of deadly cube-shaped rooms. They have no idea how they got there, nor why
19:06they've been put inside such a macabre creation, or who was responsible for the cube being built.
19:11And brilliantly, the film ends without answering much of this. Only one character manages to find
19:15the cube's exit, but the film ends without revealing what awaits them outside or who made the damn thing.
19:21It's a perfectly enticingly vague one-off movie, enough that one might be compelled to ignore the
19:29sequel Cube 2 Hypercube and Prequel Cube Zero, for making far too much effort to demystify the cube,
19:35revealing that it was built by a shadowy corporation by the name of Izon. Some things are better left up
19:40in the air, and if you take the original on its own terms, it was so smart to never show
19:47its single
19:48survivor Kazan meeting the people behind the cube. The driver, the car. Time for a deep cut now with 1977's
19:57cold classic The Car, in which a mysterious black vehicle goes on a rampage, indiscriminately killing
20:02the residents of a small town. The driver of the 1971 Lincoln Continental, Mark III, is never once
20:09seen throughout the film, despite the efforts of the townsfolk to figure out who is behind the wheel.
20:15And while The Car has often been compared unfavourably to Steven Spielberg's, admittedly superior, 1971 debut
20:23Duel, which similarly features a driver whose identity is never revealed to the audience,
20:27this film ultimately takes on a wild supernatural bent. In the finale, when the car is apparently
20:34destroyed by an explosion, a seemingly demonic force can be briefly seen amid the flames, though its form
20:42is ultimately too ambiguous to be clearly identified. And honestly, the lack of a concrete explanation for
20:49what was driving the car is probably for the best. We know it's something supernatural and seemingly
20:54diabolic in origin, and that's really all we need to know. The Creatures, Bird Box. Though Netflix's
21:01post-apocalyptic horror film Bird Box was ultimately a bit of a disappointment, it at least gets credit for
21:07having the restraint to never show the central creatures. After all, in the film itself, anyone who looks at the
21:13monsters will be swiftly compelled to kill themselves. And so there's something thematically fitting about
21:18we, the viewers, also never getting to look at them. However, it almost didn't go this way. During
21:24development, producers insisted that screenwriter Eric Heisserer write a dream sequence where protagonist
21:31Mallory encounters one of the monsters. A scene featuring an on-screen monster was indeed shot, though Heisserer,
21:39director Suzanne Beer, and Sandra Bullock all pointed out that the results looked incredibly silly. And so
21:45the decision was made to never show the creatures to the audience. While Bird Box didn't live up to its
21:51full potential, at least Beer had the good sense to push back against the producers and let our imagination
21:58fill the monstrous blanks. The entity, Skinnamarink. Kyle Edward Ball's wildly polarizing experimental horror film
22:07Skinnamarink features a pair of young siblings waking up in the middle of the night and finding
22:11themselves unable to locate their father or a way to exit their house. The siblings spend the movie
22:16being tormented by an unnamed entity that's also never seen throughout the film and only heard. This
22:22is likely as much a practical choice as a vibes-based one. Introducing a physical antagonist would be much
22:28tougher to pull off persuasively on the film's mind-bogglingly low $15,000 budget. We hear the
22:36entity and its presence is felt through its ability to manipulate the environment of the house, but
22:42we never get a clear unambiguous look at it. Even when we see shapes, they're grainy and tough to parse,
22:49as likely contributed to Skinnamarink becoming a much-discussed viral hit in 2023. Because as the history
22:57of horror has proven time and time again, even the most incredible effects can't compete with what the
23:05human brain can cook up when left to its own devices. That's everything for our list today, folks. Thank
23:11you so, so much for watching along. You are awesome. You are wonderful. Is there any decidedly missing
23:17characters that you think should be on this list? Let us know in the comments below. Please make sure
23:21you're following us on the various socials. We're at WhatCultureHorror, I'm at Sean Farrick, and you are a big
23:24bunch of legends. Look after yourself until I see you again. Make sure that you are liking, sharing,
23:28and subscribing. And until I see you, you might not see me, but I'm there.
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