Horror movie monsters come in all shapes and sizes, but there are some familiar concepts that tend to show up in all scary stories. In making it the object of one’s terror, there are certain features that humanity has long identified as threatening, and those features will of course continue to crop up.
The returning monsters such as vampires, zombies and werewolves can have infinite alternative takes while still staying within the same basic concept. Interestingly, without pulling those generational monsters, authors and filmmakers can create a horrifying new nightmare by combining only certain traits, like a character creator in a video game.
The Blank, simply put, is a faceless humanoid entity. Not a creature with unusual features or one whose face is deliberately hidden, but one whose face has no defining features. There are more half examples of this trope than full ones. Countless horror creatures and characters lack a single standout feature. They lack a mouth, or a nose, one or both eyes. The real Blank is without any noteworthy features. The go-to example is undoubtedly Slender-Man, the iconic internet horror creation. A tall pale man in a chic suit wouldn’t be particularly scary, but the creators increased the impact by removing his face. The faceless creature has been a reliable horror concept for generations,
One of the most prolific founders of this trope in horror literature was the father of cosmic horror HP Lovecraft. Lovecraft was quite a unique author, but he did take some inspiration from contemporary artists. One of his greatest sources of inspiration was the collection of short stories from 1895 The king in yellow by Robert W. Chambers. That groundbreaking work of gothic horror told several little stories linked together by an in-fiction play. That piece featured a character called only the Stranger whose face is featureless and white. The first person to see the Stranger demands that he remove his mask, only to reveal that he is not wearing one.
The stranger and his featureless face became the inspiration for one of Lovecraft’s iconic creatures. That figure is Cthulhu’s half brother, Hastur, AKA The Yellow King. One of the many forms of Hastur is a yellow-clad humanoid wearing a blank face, helpfully shrouded in a high hood. Hastur isn’t even Lovecraft’s only faceless creature. The Night-guant is a winged dream monster with a blank page under its curved horns. Even some images of Nyarlathotep depict him with a writhing tentacle where a face should go. It’s a common theme, but it’s not the only one.
Lovecraft is far from the only voice in the Blank as a trope, but the next big step forward for using the concept in horror is a bit more disturbing than eldritch horrors. Dalton Trumbo’s 1938 Anti-War Novel Johnny has his gun tells the story of a young soldier who counterintuitively is called Joe. Joe goes to World War I and is hit by an artillery shell. All four limbs have been destroyed. He was made blind, deaf and dumb. He cannot move, he cannot perceive the world around him. Joe’s face is obscured, and in Trumbo’s own 1971 film adaptation of the work, the audience can only see the featureless white box covering his collapsed skull.
Joe discovers that he can communicate by typing Morse code with his head. He asks his senior officers to show him on a freak show to demonstrate the horrors of war. If they refuse, he requests that they kill him. They also refuse that. Joe lives an indefinite life, numbed to reality by constant pain-killing drugs and driven insane by a fate worse than the death he must now endure. It’s one of the most poisonous and obnoxious pieces of cinema to ever hit the screen, and it’s part of what made the image of an anonymous human so nightmarish.
Not many works of fiction have used the Blank as Trumbo did. It’s usually used to make an otherwise banal human antagonist a little more menacing. Stephen King’s The score introduced Randal Flagg, a creature that often appears in dreams with a black hole for its face. doctor who has featured many aliens that lacked some or all of their functions. Numerous sci-fi series feature creatures stealing the faces of others, often complete with a blank facade. Multiple horror films have used the concept as the film’s primary gimmick. The otherwise awful 2012 slasher movie smiley has quite an interesting take on the concept, the central assassin has a blank face into which it has carved its features to create its signature grin.
The Blank is a simple concept that can be used almost anywhere. From early cosmic horror to modern sci-fi, the idea of a faceless person will never cease to be scary.
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