I love horror, you love horror, we as a society love horror. There’s something about seeing the strange and unusual that gets us excited. Horror is about a lot of things. It’s about exploring dark themes, it’s about bringing forth previously unknown emotions, it’s about creating tension and most importantly, it’s about really cool villains.

The horror genre is full of dozens of bizarre and terrifying monsters, some more iconic than others. Everything from the original Frankenstein from 1931, to the slasher icons of the 80s, such as “Jason Voorhees” and “Freddy Krueger.”

If you were to go up to a random person on the street and ask them to name an iconic movie monster, there’s a high chance that they’ll name one of the creatures of old, the characters we consider “traditional” horror mascots. 

Now, a lot of these characters premiered quite a while ago, most of them being pre-2000s. This raises the question, what modern characters can we consider horror “icons?” Who’s able to stand alongside the likes of “Michael Myers” and “Dracula?” 

In this article, I’m going to be looking back at a handful of characters who have premiered within the past few years and see which ones deserved the title of “horror icon.” I’m also going to be looking at characters and franchises that flopped, slashers and killers that could’ve been great.

Let’s start by discussing what makes a famous horror character. First off, they have to be the primary antagonist. They must be a creature or masked individual who stalks and murders their victims, bonus points if their victims are teenagers. Second, they must have an iconic weapon. A knife, machete, claws, etc. 

Third, they must have a decent kill count. Now, let me be clear, they don’t need a high kill count. As nice as that may be, I believe that style and means of killing is just as important. Lastly, they must have appeared in more than one movie, which sadly means no “Jordan Peele” characters. That was difficult to type.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s go over who I believed flopped.

Do you guys remember “M3GAN”? In addition, did you guys know that they made a second movie? 2022 saw the release of the first “M3GAN” movie, the story follows an artificially intelligent doll who develops self-awareness and becomes hostile towards those who dare come in between her and her human companion.

Upon release, the original film was met with much praise. It was a fun, campy horror movie that called back to the film of old. As you may imagine, it didn’t take long for them to start developing a sequel. 

“M3GAN 2.0” takes a complete 180. The sequel follows M3GAN being rebuilt to combat a humanoid military robot built using M3GAN’s technology that is attempting an AI takeover. For whatever reason, they decided to turn M3GAN into an action franchise. While it is not uncommon for horror sequels to jump the shark, it usually doesn’t happen till at least the fifth movie.

This decision was met with much criticism. When asked about the genre change, producer “Jason Blum” responded with the now infamous quote. “We all thought Megan was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy.”

Despite the lackluster performance and reviews of “M3GAN 2.0,” the franchise is getting another installment next year. However, I honestly don’t see the series bouncing back, at least not in any meaningful way. At this point, it’s difficult to even consider her a horror character.

Next let’s look at “The Grabber” from the “Black Phone” series. To be totally honest, it feels a bit unfair to include “The Grabber” in this. His movie has only recently gotten a sequel, as of the time of writing this article it came out a mere week ago. However, he’s already making waves in the community.

He has it all, a cool look, an awesome weapon, a great actor, an actual decent sequel. “The Grabber” has all the ingredients needed, all he has to do is cook more with them. As much as I like the character, he’s missing a fairly important part of the slasher stereotype. His kills are fairly lackluster, in the first movie pretty much all of his victims were handled offscreen. I’m not saying that every kill has to be a big bloody mess, however it would be nice to see him at least use his axe. I believe that it will take at least a third movie to cement his place as a true horror icon.

The last character I want to go over is a rather obvious choice, so obvious that he was probably the first person you thought of when you read the title of this article. “Art the Clown,” from the “Terrifier” movies.

Let me open by saying that I haven’t seen any of the “Terrifier” movies. I don’t have any attachment to the franchise, which means I’m totally unbiased. I believe that “Art” is by far the most popular of the new generation horror characters. “Art” has everything “The Grabber” has, plus what he was missing. 

The “Terrifier” films are popular mainly due to their gruesome and brutal kills. They’re so popular in fact, that the third movie became the highest grossing unrated movie of all time, which is even more impressive when you realize that the movies were funded on an indie budget.

While there’s many more characters out there, I mainly wanted to stick to killers that made their debut within the last ten years. With the amount of horror movies that are constantly being released, it’s pretty rare that we get one that can actually stick around. More so, it’s even more difficult to get one that can be compared to the classics. While “Art” and “The Grabber” are nowhere near as popular as the killers of old, they have the building blocks.

Not “M3GAN” though.