Editorials
Liked ‘Predator: Badlands’? Here Are 6 Other Creature Features Where We Rooted For The Monster
It’s not very difficult for movie monsters to outshine their human co-stars in genre films. After all, it takes good writing and believable performances to make a human character relatable. Even then, all you need is a cool design to make people project all sorts of complex feelings and motivations onto fictional creatures.
That’s why it makes sense that so many filmmakers grow up idolizing the monstrous antagonists of yesteryear, only to end up humanizing them in films like Peter Jackson’s King Kong or even Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water. And in honor of Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands becoming the latest Creature Feature to focus on the monster itself, we’ve decided to come up with a list highlighting six other monster movies where we were also rooting for the monster instead of its victims!
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be considering any Creature Feature that either intentionally or unintentionally justifies the monster’s killing spree – regardless of whether or not they’re the main character of the story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own monstrous favorites if you think we missed a particularly memorable example of this trope.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Exists (2014)
Despite being a Found Footage film covering subject matter tailor-made for this format and boasting one of the directors behind the original Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sánchez’s Exists plays out more like an over-the-top B-movie than a realistic depiction of Bigfoot, which is actually one of the reasons why I find it so damned entertaining.
Of course, part of the film’s appeal has to do with the fact that, at least from Bigfoot’s point of view, Exists is more of a Revenge Thriller than a horror movie. While I won’t spoil any of the details in case you’ve yet to see Sánchez’s oddball return to the Found Footage genre, suffice to say that it’s easy to sympathize with Sasquatch once you know his side of the story here.
5. I Am Legend (2007)
While we’ve yet to see a definitive adaptation of Richard Matheson’s apocalyptic classic (with George Romero’s Dead films being some of the only movies to engage with the spirit of the novel despite not being direct adaptations), the Alternate Ending of 2007’s I Am Legend at least tries to acknowledge the tragic twist present in Matheson’s source material.
After all, in this superior version of the film’s climax, it eventually becomes clear that the Alpha Darkseeker is only hunting Dr. Neville because, from his perspective, the Doctor has cruelly kidnapped and experimented on his mate like a day-time Boogeyman.
If that doesn’t justify a home invasion, I don’t know what does!
4. Cold Skin (2017)
“Man is the real monster” isn’t as innovative an idea as it used to be, but that’s not to say that monster movies are incapable of surprising audiences with particularly despicable human beings facing karmic justice in the form of otherworldly creatures.
In the case of Xavier Gens’ Lovecraftian thriller Cold Skin, what really makes the story stand out is the way that our main character slowly comes to terms with his own role in provoking the nightly wrath of the sea-people. Much like the aforementioned I Am Legend, it’s hard to blame these humanoid sea monsters for simply wanting to rescue one of their own.
3. Land of the Dead (2005)
“Looks like God left the phone off the hook.”
I’ve already written a whole article about my love of Big Daddy, the true protagonist of George Romero’s Land of the Dead, but it’s impossible to discuss justified movie monsters without bringing up the lone zombie who started a revolution. Motivated by the suffering of his undead brethren, it’s hard to argue against Big Daddy’s quest for social justice when you see just how monstrous the human characters can be.
While the final invasion of Fiddler’s Green is an undeniably gruesome sequence where many of the victims had nothing to do with the suffering experienced by Big Daddy and his zombified peers, you can’t help but cheer as the undead literally and figuratively gut the system that once oppressed them.
2. Wendigo (2001)
The weirdest film on this list by a wide margin, Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo is only barely a monster movie. After all, the majority of the artsy thriller’s runtime is spent following an impressionable young child who may or may not be correct in assuming that the strange events surrounding his family are being caused by the Native American spirit of the Wendigo.
This unreliable narrator of sorts allows Fessenden to change aspects of the original Wendigo legend to better fit his story, with the naïve protagonist re-imagining the cannibalistic creature as an avenging angel after his father gets into an unfortunate “hunting accident.” That’s why it’s safe to say that this version of the Wendigo is more of a spooky hero than anything else, as the mythical creature hunts down the rowdy locals who hurt Miles and his family.
1. The Fog (1980)
Arguably John Carpenter’s most underrated film, The Fog chronicles the plight of a sleepy seaside community that gets engulfed by an otherworldly mist carrying a legion of vengeful spirits. However, if you look past the main characters’ fear and confusion as their lives are both literally and figuratively torn apart by ghosts, it’s actually very easy to sympathize with the town’s destruction.
After all, like many classic ghost stories, The Fog gives our spooky villains a tragic origin: a century before the events of the film, the founders of Antonio Bay purposefully sank a ship full of sick sailors wishing to start a leper colony, and then proceeded to steal their valuables. One hundred years later, the ghosts are simply taking back what’s theirs and exacting justified revenge on the families that originally ordered their deaths.
This doesn’t sound very fair to the descendants of the original criminals, but you can’t really apply modern moral values to 19th-century revenants!
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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