What features make a creature look physically terrifying?

I have yet to run across anything that does.
If I were to form a story around these fears, I would start with setting & who the story is aimed toward.
Most fears are global, but each pocket of people have their own as well. Most are based on circumstances that those particular groups had to deal with. For instance, if you look into areas kind of isolated from modern medical facilities, you find some of the biggest fears are creatures that prey on newborns & mothers weak from childbirth.

 

One of the most interesting 'monsters' to me was the Daleks from Dr. Who. The idea of murderous and super intelligent squid creatures buried inside of tanks always fascinated me. I know the Daleks fall under the sci fi aliens category, but, there is a definite horror element to them.

 

I think one of the other things that lends an extra layer of the horrific to the Xenomorph is that there is something sexual about the creature that's disturbing to even admit to or try to define, but it's there. And that's a seriously fucked up line to cross. It creates a short circuit between the terrifying and the deeply intimate that should never happen. I know little Xeno has seen better days, but back before we were tired of seeing it, when I was young, when it was just ALIEN and Aliens, yes... that undercurrent of sexual violation was deeply unsettling.

 

And imagine how much more grotesque and horrifying the Alien movies would have been if they'd stuck with the original designs.
That's what makes quality horror stand out so much from the majority we usually see. It pushes the boundaries and touches on sensitive and gritty real life topics.

 

I agree with surrealscenes. The best monsters are often personal to the character. Monsters are often allegorical, and I think Silent Hill 2 does this really well, so spoilers below...

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James arrives at Silent Hill with a letter from his dead wife saying she's in their special place in an abandoned town. While we beleive at first that the wife dies of illness, it's later revealed that James resented her taking away his freedom, as he had to look after her. Particularly, they no longer had sex. He was frustrated and wanted sex with other people and, when the frustration reached boiling point, he killed her.

The main antagonist in Silent Hill 2 is pyramind head. As you can imagine, it is a normal person with a giant, metal pyramid on their head, splattered in blood, dragging a heavy knife along the floor. Before the allegorical signficance is revealed, it's already terrifying due to the idiosyncratic, strange design that throws the player off balance. Once we realise that pyramid head is James' punishment for killing his dead wife, it becomes even more terrifying. The first scene we're introduced to pyramid head is it raping two lesser monsters, symbolising James' lust while his wife, Mary, was hospitalised.

The teeth baring, long clawed monsters aren't that scary to me unless there's some significance to the character or plot. I agree with a lot of the other posters, in some ways the more human and relatable the monsters are to the reader, the more terrifying.

 

A monster is not only confined to some grotesque mythical beast covered in spikes and
big pointy teeth.
The most terrifying are the ones that don't appear to be monsters at all.
The ones that have the mentality to cause pain and terror, but on the
surface are not scary in the slightest.
Just my 2 schillings.

 

I have a thing about bug eyes, so they're creepy to me. Also, @The Dapper Hooligan's robot is pretty scary, or at least at the end when she said "Okay, I will destroy humans' in her chipper little robot voice. Yeah, no.

And @Cave Troll is on it with things that don't appear to be monsters at all. The person you talk to every day and have no idea they're holding seven people hostage in their basement. You've been to their house for dinner, you've been alone with them, you've helped them - never realizing how close to death you are. That's terrifying, physically so because of the apparent normality.

 

I agree with all of this, but the OP did explicitly ask what makes a monster physically terrifying. Someone who appears normal but does morbid things below the surface is definitely a monster, but what makes them terrifying isn't how they look

 

There's a Bear Grylls show that deals with making people confront their fears. That and shows about strange addiction have brought some rather interesting phobias to my attention.

Keeping in mind that while fear is a natural instinct what causes fear is subjective to the individual.

With animals, my fear comes from how the animal perceives me and how it will react to my presence. A perfectly domesticated dog that looks cute when it's barking at me frightens me once it's teeth are buried in my hand.

I'm sufficiently afraid to know not to feed a dog from my hand when that dog doesn't know the difference between my hand and the piece of meat I'm offering him.

For some people, just seeing the dog and seeing its tail wag could cause anxiety.

 

And when you look at the original grouping of artwork that served as the point of genesis for the Xenomorph, many of the other pieces from Giger at that time were decidedly more blatant in their sexual motifs. The piece that gave birth to the Xenomorph itself shows a version of it where it's clearly holding its own insane penis and the elongated head of the creature ends in what clearly looks like a penis.

Spoiler: Xenomorph

Yep, yep, yep. This is defo a clear case where more is not more. A huge part of the creature's power was in its hiddenness, in the fact that it was only seen in pieces and parts, like in an actual nightmare where things are disjointed and don't make sense and are irrational, and that irrationality is part of what frightens us. Same thing happened when they rebooted The Fog. It was a CGI fap-fest and it was nowhere near as intimidating as the original that based its scariness on the unseen and the hidden. Also, Selma Blair as a replacement for Adrienne Barbeau? No.

 

H.R. Giger is pretty will known for his sexual bio-mech art. (Dude is crazy weird and kinda amazing, though a bit adult.)

Spoiler: Bio-Mech

 

The thing we get a glimpse of in the torchlight. Start at 40:40 if the skip-to feature doesn't work.

 

While I think that the uncanny valley would be a great way to start when exploring the creep factor, I think it is self limiting. There is something especially unsettling about something which attempts to imitate humanity, even when it becomes convincing. For example, there is nothing about The invasion of the body snatchers which exists in the uncanny valley physically, yet it still causes a strong sense of discomfort due to the fact that we are uncertain of legitimacy of humanity. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft

 

That quote can likely apply to any fear that is unknown: The dark pit, of which you cannot see the bottom, the spider legs poking out from under the water spout (no intended to be a nursery rhyme reference), the shadowy figures you see as you walk down a quiet street at night, or your good neighbor that turns out to be a serial killer. All of these can be equally as terrifying, yet they are each fundamentally different in tone. I think it really comes down to how it is written, but that logic is easily applied to any situation. I think if a writer at least applies the "unknown" aspect into their writing, they can probably make anything terrifying. Even a something like the Y2K bug, which seems pretty silly in hindsight, had many people in a state of panic and fear, because the results were unknown. Granted, wild speculation and grand assumptions were made, but that's a key element of fear and horror; people will try to apply their own beliefs to the events occurring to make sense of them, which adds to the mystique and ambiguity of the thing in question. Perspective from different parties, even when they are incorrect, adds depth to whatever is being described, and the disharmony of the claims sows the seeds of doubt in the minds of those involved.

 

This has likely already been said, but I haven't read through the comments.

1) Anything that defies the senses. Especially visual. Then auditory, then tactile, then olfactory. I'm hoping nobody has experience tasting monsters, cause eew.
- Ex: If you can't see them, but you know they are there. That is creepy. That twig that snaps out in the woods at night. Creep factor raised. An upset creech owl at night right over your head. Just a harmless tiny fluffball, but man oh man, it sounds like someone is dying and you can't see it - I thought I might die when that sucker went off. Took 10 minutes to get my adrenaline back down.

2) Anything that touches on the instinctual or collective unconscious archetypal dangers.
- Ex. A serpentine dragon calls to our primitive survival instincts.
* Snakes = deadly venom + bite first, ask questions never policy = painful death.
*Spiders + venom + speed, patience, predatory, and ability to hide almost anywhere = fear
* Mouth like a leech or other parasitic bits. It calls to your innate survival response
* Fangs, claws... same thing
* High intelligence, no mercy attitude or things that like to play with their prey - big cats for example. Extremely dangerous, and pure predator, but very smart. Or worse yet, other humans.

Thats all I can think of right now. My advice, think of what can't be seen when setting up a scary scene. And think of those things that call to our base nature and whisper, Run!

 

Actually, CGI makes things harder, not easier, and more complicated. It also allows things to be done better, yes, but that increases the overall challenge to make it right, instead of making it just to show off your amazingly sculpted 3D model; that's the real pitfall with CGI. Too many designers and directors want to show off because they couldn't before, so like Brad Bird said, "they just keep making bigger explosions, another loud sound effect, a flash of light and some cool fireworks". I'm paraphrasing, but that's the essence. It takes a real director (looks sharply at Peter Jackson) to know how to still add in suspense and epic filmography. They've become so obsessed with trying to look awesome, they've forgotten that now it just looks boring.

No, CGI is harder, and it's so hard that it's made morons and fools out of even the greatest directors. Let us have a moment of silence for Stephen Spielberg, he too has fallen victim.

What creates an epic monster is your imagination; not just on the creator's side, but the audience as well. Show, don't tell. It's just that they've forgotten that in movies somehow, where showing is fucking easy and they still got it wrong. Keep your monster mysterious, show some elements at different times to give out some intrigue, but then hide most of it in the shadows, or in this case, out of sight from your MC's so they can't tell your reader too much all at once. The rest is story.

 

Something human looking but sickly malnourished looking and pale would be creepy.

Something that is fast can be scary whether it is fast and big and you only see glimpses of it or if they are small and fast and you can often see their eyes far away in the night.

Night can be scary if you feel watched too. So again, seeing shiny eyes in the distance can be creepy as well.

 

A sense of unknown, makes them scary.

Not being able to see them, but knowing they are there lurking in the shadows, stalking you, waiting for the moment to strike.

Silence is also scary, make a noise and you have idea where they are.

 

I haven't read the thread so it might have been mentioned, but lack of symmetry/order can be inherently frightening. The teeth of sharks and crocodiles aren't just scary because we know they can hurt us - there's also a visceral repulsion at the jagged, mixed-up, unsymmetrical nature of them. That's why a gaping shark's mouth is scarier than a gaping tiger's mouth.

 

"Sophia is capable of natural facial expressions"
*Sophia proceeds to make faces unlike any I've ever seen before*

 

Many politicians give me an uncanny valley feeling.

 

Odd textures (like gooey skin) and parts that are sharp.

 

I think creepy and terrifying are two different things. For creepy, I think anything that doesn't fit our natural laws would work (e.g., eyes/ears/nose in the wrong place, way more sensory organs eyes than it would make sense for a creature to need, no or translucent skin, etc.) for terrifying, you want to evoke the reader's sense of a loss of control or vulnerability, like a penetrating, unflinching stare, or sharp extremities that would easily tear delicate flesh, or trigger the reader's sense of disgust with oozing or rotting flesh. That can be terrifying as well.