itβs a pretty well-known phenomenon that you only get a couple seconds with your horror creature fully visible onscreen before it gets βchuckied,β a term coined by yours truly referring to the shift between the first and second acts of childβs play (1988) as the audience gets used to seeing the little chucky puppet moving around and consequently can no longer buy into the filmβs serious slasher tone in the absence of the horror of the unknown. the tuunbaq in the terror and the dogomorph in alien 3 (1992) are also famous victims of chuckyingβjust like how lovecraftian horror usually falls flat on the screen, too much visibility and your scary, amorphous creature will become a very morphous puppet or cgiβd in picture. the easiest way to combat this is of course to keep the creature obscured for as much of the piece as possible; for instance, despite their oppressive presence throughout their respective works, the beast in over the garden wall is shown for less than six frames and the eponymous kaiju of cloverfield (2008) is never properly shown, allowing each to retain their mystery and danger. another route is to simply lean into the campiness of it, like the later childβs play franchise and alien resurrection (1997). in the case of the blob (1958) a mere satirical title sequence song is enough to completely transform a fairly standard creature feature into an enduring masterpiece of hokey fun. the third option to combat chuckying is for the horror creature to constantly transformβthe thing (1982), the fly (1986), and aliens (1986) show their creatures in loving detail, but there is always something the audience hasnβt seen yet, something they donβt know to brace themselves for. itβs a fine line to walk, of course, but thatβs the nature of the game when you want to turn the concept of the unknown into something knowable enough to bite you
