10 Horror Movies Where You Don’t See the Monster Until the End

Creature features and monster movies can often be the most entertaining films in the horror genre. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, and anything else that goes bump in the night can create some of the most frightening yet entertaining horror films. Movies such as The Lost Boys and Fright Night both feature some gnarly creatures, but they are also an absolute blast to watch. Some horror movie monsters are genuinely terrifying, such as the Xenomorph from Alien or the Red Face Demon from Insidious, especially in that infamous jump scare. Sometimes the monster isn’t necessarily scary, but rather so disgusting it makes your skin crawl, like the shape-shifting monster from The Thing or the Brundlefly from The Fly.

Many horror movies that focus on monsters as their main antagonist will show the creature throughout the movie to really make viewers uncomfortable. Nevertheless, there are horror films that choose to show its hideous or terrifying monster at the very end of the movie rather than make its viewers eventually grow accustom to seeing it throughout the movie. Waiting to reveal the true form of a monster until the last act builds tension and creates a sense of dread surrounding what the creature or entity actually looks like. Here are ten horror movies that don’t show the monster until the end:

10 Smile (2022)

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Smile was a surprisingly huge hit when it premiered in 2022 thanks to dedicated performances and an engaging concept. The film follows a traumatized psychiatrist named Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) who pushes past her troubled past by treating others with trauma. After an encounter with a patient who was convinced something an unseen entity was after her, Rose herself finds that someone, or something, is coming for her. Whoever sees a person who has been infected by this monstrous entity, they too become infected and there is no cure. Instead, they will take their own life in front of someone and pass it on to them. Anyone who has been infected by this entity sports an unbelievably creepy smile until their final moments.

The entity doesn’t reveal its true form until the last act, and it is horrifying. It’s tall, ugly, and sinister. Its true face is just a mess of smiling mouths with absolutely no skin covering it. It’s just bloody insides. It is absolutely pure nightmare fuel.

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9 Host (2020)

Host

Release Date

July 30, 2020

Director

Rob Savage

Cast

Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore

Rating

Not Rated

Main Genre

Horror

Shot, edited, and released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Host took advantage of everyone being isolated from friends and family by using the format of video chat apps to create a terrifying horror original. It puts a new spin on the found footage sungenre in just a mere 57-minute runtime by centering around a group of friends who have a socially distant séance over Zoom to put an end to their lockdown boredom.

Of course, their innocent venture into conjuring spirits goes horribly awry, and soon the friends are picked off one by one on camera. One of the friends, Jemma (Jemma Moore) even breaks quarantine to go check on Haley (Haley Bishop) because the night has been so horrifying. As the Zoom’s time limit clock rapidly approaches the end, the two friends use a Polaroid camera to light the room, and the camera’s flash reveals a horrific-looking monster right before the timer ends and the feed cuts out.

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8 Sinister (2012)

Sinister

Release Date

March 29, 2012

Director

Scott Derrickson

Cast

Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Dalton Thompson, James Ransone, Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley ll

Rating

R

Main Genre

Horror

About ten years before they teamed up to make The Black Phone, director Scott Derrickson and Ethan Hawke made the supernatural horror flick Sinister. Combining found footage for the past and regular filming for the present, the film revolves around a true crime novelist named Ellison Oswalt (Hawke) moves his family into a house where an entire family was previously murdered, but neglects to inform his wife or kids. Hoping to write a successful book based on the crime, he finds a series of tapes that may aide him in his research, but Ellison gets much more than he bargained for by living in that house.

It is eventually revealed through these tapes depicting various crimes that there is a purely evil entity behind these grisly killings, an entity named Bughuul, also known as the Eater of Children. He essentially brainwashes innocent young children into brutally murdering their entire families, so he can keep the children and eventually consume their souls. It’s a terrifying concept, and the appearance of this horrible monster is just as terrifying when he is finally shown in the film’s final moments, as Ellison’s daughter has just written on the walls of her house with her family’s blood.

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7 The Babadook (2014)

Jennifer Kent’s psychological horror film from Australia follows a single mother named Amelia (Essie Davis) and her troubled son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) when both of them are plagued by nightmares after a mysterious children’s book turns up at their house. Both mother and son have dreams of an evil monster that seems to live within the walls of their house. He is summoned by reading his book, and the book cannot be destroyed.

For much of the movie, Amelia, Samuel, and the audience anticipate the reveal of the entity as the tension and anxiety build throughout the film. The Babadook doesn’t show up until the third act, and his true form is much more sinister than you would expect a character from a supposed children’s book to be. With his long, gangly body and extremely pale face, The Babadook is definitely not something you would want to see in your dreams.

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6 Malignant (2021)

James Wan has worked primarily in the horror genre throughout his career, and he has made some of the most well-received films in the genre of the past two decades. From his iconic Saw franchise to the Conjuring Universe, he has also made a few great standalone horror films, one of those being the plot twist-heavy Malignant.

This is a major spoiler for the movie, but in a headache-inducing reveal in the third act, we find out that the main character Madison (Annabelle Wallis) has a sinister teratoma tumor that shares a brain and spinal cord with her. This monster was supposed to be her brother, but instead, he is able to contort Madison’s body and take over her cognitive and motor functions to wreak havoc on those around her. Gabriel can be seen from the back of Madison’s head as he literally splits her skull and uses her body to walk backward. The full extent of Madison’s past isn’t fully revealed until the final act, and neither is Gabriel. He is a disgusting creature that physically lives inside Madison’s skull and bursts out through her hair when he takes control of her body.

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5 Skinamarink (2022)

Skinamarink

Release Date

November 4, 2022

Director

Kyle Edward Ball

Cast

Jaime Hill, Lucas Paul, Ross Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault

Rating

Not Rated

Main Genre

Horror

Kyle Edward Ball’s surprise film Skinamarink was the talk of the community among horror fans in 2022. Much of what happens is not actually shown as most of it occurs off-screen with subtitles to tell the viewer vaguely what might be happening. Much of what is shown are ceiling corners and floors, but the concept is terrifying for many of us. The movie follows two young children who wake up in the middle of the night to discover that their dad is gone and all the exterior windows and doors have vanished, leaving them trapped in their house. The children spend day and night in the dark with their main light source coming from their television that plays a continuous loop of the same cartoon. There is a demonic voice coming from somewhere within the house that persuades the children to commit horrifying acts.

This entity’s form is never explicitly revealed, which makes it even more nerve-wracking. The fact that it keeps the children mostly in the dark and purposefully scares them is absolutely terrifying. There is a blurry shot of what seems to be a deformed face shown at the end that is believed to be the entity, and it’s unnerving to look at.

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4 A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place

Release Date

April 3, 2018

Director

John Krasinski

Cast

Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millie Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward, Leon Russom

Rating

PG-13

Main Genre

Horror

John Krasinski proved that he is not only a capable actor, but a more than capable director and writer when he released A Quiet Place in 2018. The masterpiece in horror takes place in a world where vicious creatures roam the Earth that are triggered by noise.

These creatures are mean and nasty, and take their victims out in one brutal, fell swoop. Any type of noise from something dropping to a car starting will make them appear. They are also blind, which somehow makes them even more unnerving. They are ultra-fast, nearly indestructible, and very strong. There is very little amount of sound in this film, so when the creatures are on-screen, the sound design perfectly builds the tension of these awful monsters. These monsters aren’t fully shown in all their gross glory until the final act of the film, and they give the creatures from Alien a run for their money.

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3 The Fly (1986)

The Fly

Release Date

August 15, 1986

Director

David Cronenberg

Cast

Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel, Leslie Carlson, George Chuvalo

Rating

R

Main Genre

Horror

Both David Cronenberg’s remake and the original 1958 film of the same name have a very similar monster reveal, but they are done in completely different ways, just as the plot is the same but executed quite differently. Cronenberg’s version of The Fly follows an eccentric scientist named Dr. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) after he changes the world with his successful teleportation device.

When he decides to test it on himself, he accidentally fuses himself with one of the most irritating pests on the planet; a fly. In the 1958 version, the doctor’s transformation is immediate, whereas Seth’s is gradual throughout the movie, with skin irritations and eventually deformed flesh. However, just as in the original, the creature’s true form is not revealed until the very end. In Seth’s case, his jaw is ripped apart and his metamorphosis into a fly is complete.

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2 Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby

Release Date

June 12, 1968

Director

Roman Polanski

Cast

Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy

Rating

R

Main Genre

Drama

Horror went through a transformative period in the ’60s that forever changed the genre with films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby. The iconic religious horror film follows a young Catholic couple who are eager to start a family. After moving into New York’s notorious Bramford apartment building, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) becomes pregnant, and the couple starts to experience freakish things in the apartment complex. She quickly becomes purposefully cut off from her friend group, hinting at a sinister and well-planned conspiracy.

Related: 10 Scariest Monsters From Recent Horror Movies

Rosemary descends into a spiral of mental agony and disbelief, and the film does an excellent job of building tension as the viewer wonders whether this unborn child is really evil. While the baby is never actually shown, there is no mistaking that it was certainly the cause of Rosemary’s trauma, and it is made clear that the face is physically abnormal.

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1 Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser (1987)

Release Date

September 11, 1987

Director

Clive Barker

Cast

Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Oliver Smith, Robert Hines

Rating

R

Genres

Horror

Clive Barker’s wonderfully ’80s horror thriller Hellraiser follows Larry (Andrew Robinson) and Julia (Claire Higgins), a married couple who recently moved into a house close to where Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) lives with her boyfriend. When Julia discovers that the house is already occupied by her brother-in-law- Frank (Sean Chapman), she learns that he opened a supernatural puzzle box that that summoned a group of demon sadists from hell, and now requires a series of blood sacrifices in order to escape their clutches and regain his human body.

This demonic sadist group is known as the Cenobites, and they are previously human creatures that now have deformities, such as Pinhead and his iconic head full of nails or the Chatterer’s constantly clicking teeth. While Frank and his skinless body is shown frequently throughout the film, the Cenobites only show up toward the end, but they make quite the entrance.

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