Editorials
When Horror Gets Weird: 10 Horror Movies About Killer Inanimate Objects
Horror streamer Shudder unleashes its newest horror-comedy, Slaxx, on March 18. The gory and absurd slasher features a pair of designer jeans as the bloodthirsty killer. While locked inside a trendy clothing store overnight to prepare for a huge event to unveil a new line, the staff fall victim to a homicidal pair of jeans. It marks the latest entry in a weird niche sub-genre dedicated to inanimate objects that spring to life and embark on a murder spree.
Horror leaves no corner unexplored, infusing fear into anything and everything, including items you’d never even consider as a source of terror. From flesh-hungry beds to homicidal dolls, a subset that’s developed its own corner of horror, films have created killers out of just about everything. Whether played for laughs or straightforward chills, it’s easy to see why this particular sub-category has legs; killer inanimate objects tend to deliver ruthlessly creative on-screen deaths.
Here are ten of the best…
In Fabric
Slaxx isn’t the only cursed clothing to grace the horror genre. Peter Strickland’s peculiar In Fabric follows a cursed dress as it passes from person to person. Each time, the dress causes tragedy for its owner, and often in gruesome ways. Highly stylized, In Fabric is a more artful approach to consumerist satire. In other words, it takes some very unexpected directions and features disturbing scenes behind the dress’s origins. The evil extends beyond a single dress.
Rubber
Quentin Dupieux excels at satirical films that revolve around unlikely objects. His 2010 horror film follows a rogue tire named Robert. Robert suddenly springs to life in the Californian desert and discovers a psychokinetic ability. It develops a fondness for making people’s heads explode. Don’t expect an explanation for the madness that ensues, but also don’t expect this movie to take itself seriously, either. It’s purposefully odd.
Christine
John Carpenter’s memorable Stephen King adaptation saw a nerdy teen undergo a dramatic personality transformation after purchasing and bonding with his new car. There’s more than meets the eye with his Plymouth Fury, Christine. It turns out she’s got one severe jealousy streak, and she’s willing to kill anyone that would get between her and her owner. Christine is one slick killing machine. Literally.
The Mangler
Tobe Hooper takes on Stephen King’s short story about a killer laundry press. The giant piece of machinery is demonically possessed, growing more ravenous and powerful with every drop of blood spilled on it. While the equipment has an insatiable hunger for flesh, it influences victims in other exciting ways, too. Robert Englund is featured as the press’s owner. If neither Christine nor The Mangler quenched your thirst for Stephen King stories about inanimate objects, make it a marathon with The Lawnmower Man and Maximum Overdrive.
Exte
Before Bad Hair, there was Exte. Sion Sono’s Japanese horror-comedy revolves around killer hair extensions. A fetishist working as a morgue night watchman becomes obsessed with a corpse’s luxurious hair and decides to sell it to various hairdressers. The hair inflicts visions of death before killing them, and it’s up to an aspiring hairstylist to solve the curious case. Sure, hair is technically organic tissue, but it’s not supposed to behave this way- the deaths get incredibly violent.
Death Spa
Technically, it’s a pissed-off ghost responsible for the gruesome deaths in this supernatural slasher of sorts. Still, that ghost possesses her husband’s health spa. The entire facility is at her disposal, and the angry spirit gets creative when inflicting pain and suffering upon its members. Look for Ken Foree and Brenda Bakke, but mostly keep an eye out for the over-the-top deaths- the real star of this ’80s flick.
Chopping Mall
Park Plaza Mall just upgraded its security system with a trio of robots programmed to apprehend thieves with tasers and tranquilizers. A freak lightning storm puts their programming on the fritz, though, flipping their switch from detaining to slaughter on sight. That’s terrible news for the group of mall employees that decided to stay overnight in a store for some partying. The killbots find all sorts of ways to destroy their targets, including a memorable head explosion. Have a nice day!
The Lift
Malfunctioning elevators often make for harrowing scenes in cinema. Final Destination 2’s brutal kill instantly comes to mind, for example. Amsterdamned’s Dick Maas turns the concept into a full feature, where a sentient elevator unleashes its fury upon unsuspecting passengers in an office building. It will make you question stepping foot inside an elevator ever again. Maas also wrote and directed The Lift’s 2001 American remake, Down (aka The Shaft), but stick with the original.
Oculus
The Lasser Glass isn’t the first haunted or evil mirror in horror; look to 1990’s Mirror Mirror for more killer mirror mayhem. But it is the one featured in the first wide-release horror movie for Mike Flanagan, Oculus, and it’s arguably the most dangerous. Set over two different timelines, the story centers around a pair of siblings tormented by the Lasser Glass mirror brought home by their father during their childhood. The mirror influences those around it to commit unspeakable acts, which causes lasting repercussions for the siblings. The Lasser Glass is one tricky, demented object, and it has continued to appear in Flanagan’s films since its feature introduction.
Videodrome
A programmer for a local television station specializes in boundary-pushing programming. When a strange broadcast is brought to his attention, depicting what appears to be snuff footage, he orders unlicensed use while seeking out its producers. He doesn’t know that the broadcast is a trojan horse for a hidden signal that causes a fatal tumor in the viewer. That, in turn, causes bizarre hallucinations. The inanimate object here isn’t tangible like the rest, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling thanks to David Cronenberg’s vision- the body horror and hallucinogenic imagery stick with you.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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