#666glitter

The Slasher is also The Bogeyman. While female killers are more often given specific motives or some kind of tragic past to explain their behavior, she and her male version serve the same purpose; torment the protagonists, and represent whatever kind of human evil scares the creator. Your patron saint would be Michael Myers.

The Lover is also The Stalker. This one is probably obvious haha. People, regardless of gender, are scared of being stalked. The idea of someone we find “creepy” being obsessed with us and refusing to accept rejection is unsettling. An interesting distinction between the two is that the Lover is almost always targeting men specifically, while the Stalker can target women OR men. Most likely because the Stalker is a generic predator, while the Lover is used precisely to punish men for being womanizers or pursuing the “wrong” women. Your patron saint would be Josef from Creep.

The Siren is also The Imposter. Similar to our fear of being stalked, we’re all afraid of being deceived. A charismatic figure gaining our trust and using it against us. The Siren is more likely to be outwardly menacing, making up for her danger with blatant seduction that her target is unable to resist falling for, while the Imposter instead prefers to appear innocent and benign as he lures his target into his web. But both, contrary to the Lover and Stalker’s “feelings,” are completely callous manipulators, and do not believe they genuinely care about their victims. Your patron saint would be Billy Loomis.

The Witch is also The Scientist. Both characters represent cautionary tales about hubris in the face of god and the pursuit of knowledge that humans were not meant to know. The difference being that the Witch seeks out this knowledge through spirituality and witchcraft, while the Scientist seeks it through rationality and science. The primary difference between Victor (or Henry) Frankenstein and The VVitch’s Thomasin, between Dr. Josef Heiter and Helena Markos, is the way they pursue power through either “masculine” or “feminine” enlightenment. Both types used to be villainized almost equally, but the Witch has gotten a more sympathetic (and sometimes flat-out heroic) portrayal with the growth of feminism as a movement over the decades, while arrogant nerds are still fair game. Your patron saint would be Herbert West.

The Spirit is also The Demon. Though the comparison here is the loosest. When men are sometimes specters, it’s very rare that they are given sympathetic backstories or motivations, and even rarer that they are peacefully exorcised or “saved,” though this is the case for some female vengeful spirits. The men that haunt horror stories are malevolent and violent, typically having been abusers or killers even before they died, and are sometimes completely demonic, possibly having never even been human in the first place. Even when female spirits are completely malicious, they are usually given an origin that helps the audience understand why they became this way. However, both represent the same fear: the past coming back to bite in a powerful form that is invincible and unable to be reasoned with. Your patron saint would be Peter Quint.

The She-Beast is the archetype without a direct male equivalent. The horror of the she-beast is centered on a woman losing control of her body against her will in a way that makes her physically stronger but also robs her of some part of her humanity. Ginger Fitzgerald, Raw’s Justine, Carrie White. The she-beast’s physical transformation is often paralleled to menstruation by her writer because, on some level, our society views that specific bodily process as animalistic and disgusting. (Or, in some cases, like Teeth, it’s a metaphor for sexual trauma.) When male horror protagonists transform into monsters and werewolves, they usually are either empowered by this change that they eventually learn to control, or they manage to find a cure to their affliction. They are not permanently altered victims. But the girls are completely under the control of their curse and usually carry it until it kills them. Their story is often a tragedy in some form. (The key here, imo, is that men becoming stronger is expected of them, and not something that our culture views as a perversion of the natural order. Why would enhanced strength and carnivorous desires make a cis man less human?) I think the closest comparison would be the men in horror who lose control of their minds, either due to an outsider’s control or internal instability. Cis men becoming “feminine” against their will (becoming hysterical and illogical) is a similar fear to cis women becoming “masculine” against their will (becoming angry and physically dangerous). (Although, I think this is often a patriarchal fear in both cases; not young women's’ fear of themselves, but society’s fear of an innocent young woman twisted into something degenerate.) Split’s Kevin Wendell Crumb, for all his problematic aspects (as is typical with these characters and their portrayal of “insanity”), is an example of what I would call the He-Beast. He’s probably depicted less than the she-beast because a man being victimized and rendered completely weak and helpless by his own mind (and/or body) is a concept that makes audiences deeply uncomfortable in a way that doesn’t make for fun horror.

(I hope that my use of quotation marks up there makes it clear that I think these ideas in American culture are toxic and need to be left in the past. I’m happy to see the she-beast having more agency in recent films, and new horror creators providing more progressive perspectives in general. Also, there are rare cases in horror media of men transforming into monsters being a metaphor for homosexuality, but I don’t think I’m the right person to discuss that analogy.)