How Do You Build a Monster We Haven’t Seen Before?

The Monster Chain: A Framework for Creating Original Monsters

The video argues that original monsters are still possible because a creature’s originality comes from the choices beneath its familiar appearance. Host Brian presents a five-part framework—the Monster Chain—for creating a monster from scratch or reinventing a classic.

1. Fear Factor: What fear does the monster embody?

Give the monster both a surface fear—the immediate threat, such as a shark or a shadow—and a deeper fear tied to a human concern or story theme.

A deeper fear can transform a familiar premise into a different story. For example, Jaws uses a shark to explore the fear that those meant to protect people may fail them, while The Babadook connects its creature to grief.

To find an idea, ask what has recently kept you awake, then imagine that worry appearing as a monster.

2. Origin: What made the monster monstrous?

Decide how much the audience should know about the monster’s origin. It might remain mysterious, drive the plot as characters investigate it, or help the audience understand or sympathize with the creature.

The video contrasts the unexplained threat in Halloween with stories such as The Ring, where uncovering the origin is central, and Frankenstein, where the creature’s creation and abandonment shape our response.

Decide the origin even if you choose not to reveal it.

3. Hunger: How does the monster hunt?

Define four aspects of the monster’s hunger:

• Desire: What does it want?
• Prey: Whom does it target, and why?
• Approach: Does it stalk, lure, ambush, or toy with its victims?
• Treatment: What does it do once it catches them?

Comparing Pennywise and Art the Clown shows how different desires and hunting styles can make monsters feel distinct, even when both are killer clowns.

4. Mechanics: What are the rules?

Establish the monster’s powers, limits (when characters can find safety), and weakness (what can defeat it or help people escape).

Clear rules create suspense and give characters and audiences something to anticipate. An unstoppable creature can leave characters with no meaningful chance to act. Try different combinations of abilities and limits: changing the rules changes how someone must survive.

5. Characteristics: What does the creature look like?

Design the monster’s appearance after developing the other links, so its features reflect its fears, origin, hunger, and mechanics.

Examples from the video include Michael Myers’s blank mask, Freddy Krueger’s burn scars, Pennywise’s clown appearance, and the sound-hunting, blind creatures in A Quiet Place.

Consider what marks its origin left on it, how its body helps it hunt, and how its design expresses its powers or limitations.

Example Creature: The Blur

Brian develops a monster based on the fear of being surrounded by people yet still being alone. Its origin is a woman who collapses on a crowded train platform while bystanders film instead of helping. After her death, someone blurs her face in a viral video.

• Desire: Make people who ignored someone in need experience the same abandonment.
• Prey: People who looked away or recorded instead of helping.
• Approach: She appears in the background of their photos and videos, getting closer whenever they look.
• Treatment: Her victims face a similar public tragedy, with onlookers filming instead of helping.
• Powers and limits: She can appear on screens and cause a victim’s death to repeat her own, but she cannot touch them in the real world and can reach them only when they look at her.
• Weakness: Finding the original, unblurred video and identifying who she was could break her control.
• Appearance: A blurred figure with an outstretched arm, growing larger in the frame until it seems to reach for the viewer.

Conclusion

Originality can come from changing any link in the chain: the underlying fear, origin, hunger, rules, or appearance. Viewers are invited to create and share their own monsters using the framework.

Creators and contributors: Brian (host and presenter); Plot Luck (channel). Rob Zombie is mentioned as the filmmaker behind the Halloween remake discussed in the video.