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6 Non-CG Movie Creatures That Will Give You Nightmares

Since the inception of CG into science fiction, fantasy, and horror films, movie creatures and creature design has taken a hit. That statement is not meant to disrespect any of the current slew of very talented CG artists out there today, but there is just something unnatural about shiny, CG monsters. They never have a real sense of physics to them. They always just ends up feeling like Roger Rabbit to me. Like someone carefully mixed animation and real acting to try to make one, fluid experience.

Cave-Dwelling Bat Beasts – The Descent

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God bless Neil Marshall. From Dog Soldiers to The Descent to Game of Thrones, he really just gets it. What is it, you ask? Well, being badass, for one. Two, palpable terror and violence. The dude never goes the CG route, and the end result is always visceral and wonderfully troubling. The creatures in The Descent stand as a testimony to this. A screeching, slimy, blind terrifying testimony to this.

If you have not seen The Descent, you have missed one of the scarier “monster movies” in recent memory. The best way to explain the creatures here are giant, rabid, blind cave-bat-mutants. They live in absolute dark, so they use echolocation to see. They also live underground and need to eat, so have a tendency to attack and rip apart anything they hear. You do the math.

It is directors like Neil Marshall and del Toro who give me faith that the art of movie creatures will not get worse and worse, even in a cinematic landscape that seems to imply as much.