Where Have All the Boogeymen Gone? The Rise and Fall of the Horror Icon…
There was a time when Freddy Krueger could outshine Batman on a Halloween aisle. Jason Voorhees sat comfortably on talk show couches. Chucky wasn’t just a killer doll; he was a walking, talking merchandise machine. These characters weren’t just villains, they were icons.
With time, clever marketing, and a community hungry for mainstream recognition, horror icons soon became household names, boasting fan clubs, action figures, and long-running franchises that transformed slasher films into Saturday morning cartoons for the bloodthirsty.
Today, the horror villain has lost their face, literally and figuratively. Modern horror is thriving by nearly every metric. Hereditary, The Babadook, Smile, Talk to Me. These are all critical darlings and box office successes. But try describing the “villain” in any of those. They’re often shapeless metaphors, stand-ins for trauma, grief, depression, and addiction. Powerful, yes. But iconic? Not quite.
So what happened to the horror icon?
The Era of the Big Bad
The ’80s and ’90s were built on recurring nightmares. Freddy Krueger was the wisecracking sadist with a complex backstory. Jason Voorhees was the silent reaper with mommy issues. Pinhead, Leatherface, Ghostface. Their masks and methods were as recognizable as their franchises’ title fonts. We weren’t just seeing teenagers piling up on a kill count, as these figures were building mythologies, one creative death at a time.
These characters weren’t contained by their movies. They lived in music videos, comic books, lunchboxes, late-night interviews, and, perhaps most importantly, in the public imagination. Horror didn’t shy away from absurdity…it leaned into it, and so did audiences.
At the time, there was some criticism that we’d lost the plot with horror by making them marketable figures. Still, many pointed back to the Universal Horror Monsters or figures like Norman Bates, who found their way into pop culture and our everyday lexicon. Horror has always teetered on the line between mainstream and outsider entertainment, but when recognizable horror figures emerged, it blended those lines perfectly.
With horror leaving behind slashers for torture porn, extremity, and paranormal haunts in the ’00s and 2010s, we got less icons, but a few remained like Jigsaw from Saw and Annabelle becoming the face of The Conjuring. Those just never reached the heights of our horror forefathers; We even had to bring back Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT just for an iconic face of the late 2010s.
The Shift to Symbolism & Why We Let Icons Die
Around the mid-2000s and into the 2010s, horror began to “elevate.” Studios chased critical acclaim. Filmmakers like Ari Aster, Jennifer Kent, and Robert Eggers brought arthouse sensibilities to their work. The monster was no longer a guy in a mask; it was the weight of loss, the scar of trauma, or the slow burn of guilt.
These films are brilliant in their own right. But they don’t birth boogeymen. Instead, they offer vibes, atmosphere, and intangible dread. There’s less room for sequels, lore-building, or fangirl obsession. You can’t cosplay the demon from The Night House.
Part of the decline of the horror icon was due to overall cultural burnout. By the early 2000s, most of our legends had run their course. They’d become oversaturated, parodied to death, or rebooted into oblivion. (Freddy vs. Jason felt like both a climax and a curtain call.) Studios grew cautious. The public grew more genre-savvy. Sincerity gave way to self-awareness, and icons became memes.
We often see this happen in the pop music world, where fads are more apparent; singers come and go as quickly as their 2:00-minute songs do, but it’s hard to find legends that have stood the test of time. Finding ‘a Lady Gaga’ is just as hard as it is to find ‘a Michael Myers.’ There’s also the reality of franchise IP. Creating a new horror icon isn’t just a creative endeavor; it’s a calculated risk. In many cases, like Halloween or Friday the 13th, these often become legal and financial gambles. Why invent a new villain when you can reboot The Exorcist for the third time?
And let’s face it: our fragmented media landscape doesn’t breed iconography like it used to. It’s hard to make a new Freddy when your film gets buried by an algorithm or disappears after a brief theatrical window.
Signs of a Comeback
But the icons aren’t entirely dead…they’re just waiting for their moment.
Art the Clown from Terrifier is the closest we’ve come to birthing a new Freddy. He has a look, a gimmick, a growing mythology. He’s not subtle, but neither was Jason, and that’s the point. M3GAN danced her way into the pop culture lexicon with just one movie. Her momentum and meme status were recently questioned with a divisive sequel, but a bit of controversy is exactly how modern icons are born.
We also have to credit Stranger Things for all of its iconic imagery throughout its seasons. The Netflix series gave us creatures that stand out, like the Demogorgon and the villainous Vecna. Neither are really at the level of a Pinhead or even a ’00s star like Sam from Trick ‘r Treat, but a younger generation holds these ghouls close to the heart.
And that’s not to say that the more prestigious filmmakers are adverse to making some waves. Jordan Peele developed three films (Get Out, Us, and Nope) that featured numerous images that would make for great iconography. The previously mentioned Robert Eggers also brought back classic vampires with Nosferatu, creating a distinct look for the character and showing his ability to work within the IP world.
Legacy characters are also being revived with care. The Chucky TV series leans into character development without sanding off his bite. Scream has found new blood with its requel, and Halloween was momentarily reborn with a Laurie Strode-centered arc. We have also seen legacy franchises crossover to new platforms, such as Texas Chainsaw and Friday the 13th, making a splash in the video game space. That type of appeal is precisely what we want, but sadly, it’s still based on characters from decades ago.
We’re not in a new golden age yet, but the seeds are being planted.
So, What Comes Next?
Perhaps the horror icon was never meant to die, but rather to evolve. In an era where horror has more creative freedom than ever, maybe we’ll get the best of both worlds: sharp storytelling and sharp objects.
Audiences still crave figures to rally behind (or run from). Studios love a good franchise anchor. And let’s be honest, there’s something deeply satisfying about watching a charismatic killer return for one more scare. With horror as mainstream as ever and the creative landscape shifting, who will take shape as our next The Shape? Is there another Freddy awaiting us in our dreams?
The boogeyman isn’t gone. He’s just waiting for his next close-up.
EJ Moreno
