Name movies where the killer had no motive

Agent Mulder's Hair

Agent Mulder's Hair

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The thread about iconic slasher movie remakes got me thinking. Rob Zombie's Halloween remake gave michael meyers a motive and reason for killing. And that's a stupid mistake, imo.

Scream laid it out for any aspiring horror movie directors. It's scarier when there's no motive! But then, and i have no clue why, even Scream immediately disregarded it's own advice, and Billy Loomis explained why he started killing, with some generic " your mom fucked my dad and my mom left us because of it." Boo hoo...cry baby.

@3:00




How much better would it have been if billy and stu said that line about scarier with no motive, and left it at that!? That would've meant it was just 2 psychos who watched too many scary movies and went nuts. Better that way, imo. Plus it would've made more of a social commentary about how far is too far in terms of movies, games and music.

But I'm trying to remember movies where the killer had zero motive and the audience never knew why they did what they did. Imo it's always scarier when the viewer's own imagination has to fill in the blanks. So what all can you come up with? It can be horror movies, sci fi, thrillers, mysteries...whatever.

I'll start:



Alien
 
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I can't think of a single one. Even the xenomorph only killed to propagate its own species. It's not like they fucked each other over for a percentage. YOUR ASS IS NAILED TO THE WALL.

We need to stop radicalizing peoples whose motives we don't understand.
 
Freddy doesn't have a motive does he? Except he likes entering dreams and killing people
 
Not a killer, but the Joker from Dark Knight didn't really have a motive.

And the Turkey from Thankskilling was just evil. No motive there.
 
Agent Mulder's Hair said:
The thread about iconic slasher movie remakes got me thinking. Rob Zombie's Halloween remake gave michael meyers a motive and reason for killing. And that's a stupid mistake, imo.

Scream laid it out for any aspiring horror movie directors. It's scarier when there's no motive! But then, and i have no clue why, even Scream immediately disregarded it's own advice, and Billy Loomis explained why he started killing, with some generic " your mom fucked my dad and my mom left us because of it." Boo hoo...cry baby.

How much better would it have been if billy and stu said that line about scarier with no motive, and left it at that!? That would've meant it was just 2 psychos who watched too many scary movies and went nuts. Better that way, imo. Plus it would've made more of a social commentary about how far is too far in terms of movies, games and music.

But I'm trying to remember movies where the killer had zero motive and the audience never knew why they did what they did. Imo it's always scarier when the viewer's own imagination has to fill in the blanks. So what all can you come up with? It can be horror movies, sci fi, thrillers, mysteries...whatever.

I'll start:



Alien
Click to expand...

To be fair, Kevin Williamson (writer) said he was stuck between deciding if it was scarier for the killer to have a motive or to not have one, so he did both - Billy had a motive, Stu didn't. Billy just convinced him to join him on a killing spree and he said yes. Judging by his facial expression when Billy is telling Sidney about his mother abandoning him, Stu probably didn't know Billy had one either.
 
Secret Agent said:
I can't think of a single one. Even the xenomorph only killed to propagate its own species. It's not like they fucked each other over for a percentage. YOUR ASS IS NAILED TO THE WALL.
Click to expand...

It's hard to think of many. That's kind of why i thought this thread might be fun.

And in Aliens, yeah we sort of got a motive. But not in the original Alien. That xeno not only killed but seemed to enjoy it. And as i recall, we never knew why. Not until the sequel anyway.



Secret Agent said:
We need to stop radicalizing peoples whose motives we don't understand.
Click to expand...

Lol huh?
 
Patrick Bateman:

giphy.gif
 
What was Zodiac's motive? Pleasure? Not sure if one was ever clearly defined' at least in the movie.
 
Oh here we go.

latest


8MM made a point in saying there's no rhyme or reason to the atrocities they committed.

Forgot that he was played by Frank Sobotka.

The_Wire_Frank_Sobotka.jpg


Agent Mulder's Hair said:
Lol huh?
Click to expand...
I'm riffing on that old villain joke, "I'm not a bad guy -- I'm just misunderstood."
 
LockardTheGOAT said:
To be fair, Kevin Williamson (writer) said he was stuck between deciding if it was scarier for the killer to have a motive or to not have one, so he did both - Billy had a motive, Stu didn't. Billy just convinced him to join him on a killing spree and he said yes. Judging by his facial expression when Billy is telling Sidney about his mother abandoning him, Stu probably didn't know Billy had one either.
Click to expand...

That kind of makes sense. I figured they went with billy's motive because having your parents split up due to infidelity isn't some crazy outlandish thing, it's fairly common in the real world. So maybe they thought that was what was scary about that.

And yeah stu definitely didn't know about billy's motive. You can tell. But billy was the scary one, stu was an idiot.

Would've been better with zero motives, imo. Still, scream was a brilliant movie all around. Especially when it was new. Nobody expected it to be half as good as it was. That shit came out of nowhere
 
Agent Mulder's Hair said:
The thread about iconic slasher movie remakes got me thinking. Rob Zombie's Halloween remake gave michael meyers a motive and reason for killing. And that's a stupid mistake, imo.

Scream laid it out for any aspiring horror movie directors. It's scarier when there's no motive! But then, and i have no clue why, even Scream immediately disregarded it's own advice, and Billy Loomis explained why he started killing, with some generic " your mom fucked my dad and my mom left us because of it." Boo hoo...cry baby.

@3:00




How much better would it have been if billy and stu said that line about scarier with no motive, and left it at that!? That would've meant it was just 2 psychos who watched too many scary movies and went nuts. Better that way, imo. Plus it would've made more of a social commentary about how far is too far in terms of movies, games and music.

But I'm trying to remember movies where the killer had zero motive and the audience never knew why they did what they did. Imo it's always scarier when the viewer's own imagination has to fill in the blanks. So what all can you come up with? It can be horror movies, sci fi, thrillers, mysteries...whatever.

I'll start:



Alien
Click to expand...

Original Halloween.
 
HomerThompson said:
Original Halloween.
Click to expand...

Perfect example and it's funny TS uses the remake as an example.

6 year old Michael Myers kills his sister, gets locked away for 15 years, escapes, then kills again. No motive except as Dr Loomis put it, he's pure evil.
 
Piece of Sheet said:
Perfect example and it's funny TS uses the remake as an example.

6 year old Michael Myers kills his sister, gets locked away for 15 years, escapes, then kills again. No motive except as Dr Loomis put it, he's pure evil.
Click to expand...

I used the remake as an example of messing up. They gave michael meyers motives, and it was dumb. Rob zombie is a twisted little moron of a man.
 
Piece of Sheet said:
Perfect example and it's funny TS uses the remake as an example.

6 year old Michael Myers kills his sister, gets locked away for 15 years, escapes, then kills again. No motive except as Dr Loomis put it, he's pure evil.
Click to expand...
Original Halloween is GOAt-tier. It's definitely getting watched in the next week leading up to Halloween.

Halloween
Nightmare on Elm Street
House of a Thousand Corpses

Must watch movies for Halloween.
 
HomerThompson said:
Original Halloween is GOAt-tier. It's definitely getting watched in the next week leading up to Halloween.

Halloween
Nightmare on Elm Street
House of a Thousand Corpses

Must watch movies for Halloween.
Click to expand...

Nightmare on Elm Street?? Freddy is murdering the children of the parents who threw him into a furnace.
 
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