Editor Erik asked the Blog Staff to take inspiration and build their own monsters. Blogger Sara chose to envision what fears our society might have in future, and what sorts of monsters would reflect those fears.

By Sara Habibipour

From vampires to zombies, the monsters that filmmakers have depicted in movies say a lot about universal fears in our society. For example, in the 1980s, there was a surge in vampire films that coincided with the AIDS pandemic. And, fears of nuclear war can be heavily seen throughout Godzilla. 

But, as life goes on, and as we progress as a society, new fears naturally arise. What monsters will we see within the next decade as a result of these new fears? 

Climate Change

Perhaps we will begin to see more monsters in movies related to climate change. I envision this monster not as a physical being, rather more of a dark cloud-like presence that has the ability to wreak havoc through emitting smog, raining acid rain, or simply not rain at all to create droughts. I envision this monster also having the ability to shapeshift into a fire-creature that melts ice caps and sparks wildfires, all things that climate change has led to.  

Disease

After experiencing the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m sure there will be a future monster related to it; we’ve all been affected by the pandemic, and we all perceive it negatively. And, whether we realize it or not, as a society, we have some trauma attached to the COVID situation (which, although unfortunate, movie makers will most likely capitalize on in the future). Although I initially envisioned this “monster of disease” to look more like a plague doctor, I think a monster wearing a mask similar to the ones we all currently wear will be more triggering to us if we were to see it in a movie a decade from now. 

Autonomous AI

A few years ago, Facebook had to shut down an AI system after robots created a language that humans couldn’t understand. Even before then, fears of AI’s capabilities soared. But, since that event, where we realized that robots could communicate without human oversight, those fears heightened. We have already seen AI takeovers happen in several movies, but with this becoming more of a reality, I hypothesize that we’ll see more drastic interpretations of AI in stories. In previous movies, AI is typically represented as your typical metal robot. Although, I think that will be a pretty accurate representation for future movies as well. Because these AI are becoming more of a reality, I think it would be scarier if they were depicted with more human-like features so that you couldn’t distinguish between the real humans and the robots. 

These are just a few future-related fears that could spark the creation of new monsters in the media. But, who knows what other societal fear-based monsters there could be? Something could happen tomorrow that could forever change our perception of scary creatures….

Build-Your-Own-Monster Editor: Erik Bearman