I’m kinda tired of the demon horror or nightmare monster horror trope in movies. I want them to change it, spice it up—like, let’s take an angel instead.
Plot idea:
You woke up and it’s 3:00 AM. After going to the kitchen for a glass of water/coffee, you climb up the stairs and return back to sleep after a piss.
You enter your sheets, snuggle up, and notice that your cover sheets/duvet is snagging at a corner.
You try dragging it again, but it doesn’t move—then you look to adjust it, switching on the bedside lamp that’s hardly on (as you live alone). And when switched on, you see an androgynous-looking person with an indescribable face that you take as similar to a mix of your father/mother/siblings’ faces layered over one another.
You squeeze your eyes and look again, wondering in confusion—but this time, the face is covered with wings over itself. That’s when you jump out of your bed in horror.
You try to escape, but the door doesn’t open—neither the exit nor the bathroom door.
You try kicking and struggling, but the figure gradually moves over to you, and in their hand they hold a book. They pronounce to you:
“In three earth cycles on the eve of the last full moon you shall die.”
“It cannot be changed or altered unless you redeem yourself.”
“Be it as it must.”
And without further context, they just open the door and leave. Your heart thumps. In the morning, you hurry to the nearest cathedral.
You ask the priest, who then looks at you like a fool who overdrank last night—they do try to help your situation, but you can’t describe what you saw. Only those three sentences ring in your mind.
They offer you to take a rest and come back, but hesitation to not die keeps ringing in your sweaty, heart-pounding face.
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Something like this, where you must try to find out what is needed.
Your heart thumps. You get a proposal that your crimes and sins might have caught up to you—or that what you did sometime ago is catching up.
Then, during this period, the MC goes on a remedial journey, trying to track back everything they did throughout their life, confessing and apologizing for everything they ever did… only for them to die at the end.
⸻
I am not a good plot maker and don’t know if it’s good, but I just want a new flavour of horror.
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Although I think it won’t be enough to be a sub genre of horror on its own, your idea sounds pretty cool. I’d be down to watch it haha
Don’t blink
This is a movie pitch. Where’s the unpopular opinion?
One thing that might be dope, is one in which God is absent or evil, and angels terrorize people. This could be due to angels not understanding what it means to be human like the show supernatural or because they are evil also like the show supernatural. Angels could take the form of biblical angels, you know the creepy version. Whether the angels are evil or misunderstanding what it means to be human, it should focus on one or the other and have the angels often take various forms. In a series or movie where the angels do not understand what it means to be human, perhaps they take the form of a dead loved one to try to calm you by looking familiar but obviously that’s not very calming or they try to look human but miss certain key features like perhaps their behavior is creepy perhaps serial killer-esque creepy. This could take the form of people trying to escape heaven “alive” or perhaps defending themselves in a world overrun by angels.
Not movies, but the comics Preacher and Hellblazer lean in to angle horror at times. The shows that use those same characters less so. Yeah, it’s effective. Movies should use it more
You might like some moments of the TV show Evil
This has sort of been done before, probably most notably in shows like Evangelion.
Biblically accurate angels are a horror in themselves, and their eyes are a separate body horror (I adore biblically accurate angels, there are no more angels, there are not many angels, please give me that chthonic horror that they caused in the Old Testament, when everyone who saw them thought they would die)
Ted Chiang’s short story, Hell is the absence of god is a great read that’s relevant
The Prophecy movies might be worth a watch to you. Angelic horror movies.
Be not afraid