Nightmare Fuel / Kong: Skull Island

The most terrifying monster of all face-to-face with King Kong.

While the new Godzilla had its own share of horrific things, Kong: Skull Island is nothing short of nightmarish at times. From the new fauna and Kong's size to the very concept of the film, there's a reason why this film could give someone nightmares.

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Pre-Movie

• In the trailer, one of the copters gets a tree thrown at it.
• The fact that Kong is big enough to fight Godzilla. While King Kong vs. Godzilla may have toyed with that idea, that movie was much more light-hearted. Here, it's utilized to show just how frightening a 100-foot-tall ape really is.
  • And according to the viral marketing calling him an "adolescent superspecies", Kong is only a teenager in the 1970s.
• One shot in the trailer has the main characters in the middle of a bamboo forest. Then the camera pans up to reveal that some of the bamboo is actually the legs of an enormous spider soundlessly walking over everyone.
  • The second trailers shows that, as usual, Skull Island has all sorts of strange, gigantic fauna.
• A German TV spot revealed a few new bits of footage with Kong... one of which shows him rising up behind a wall of fire with glaring red eyes.
• The Skullcrawlers. Being called 'the devil' to Kong's 'god' is a fitting description.
• The map to Skull Island revealed at NYCC has quite a few hidden messages when viewed with a blacklight. Most ominously, though, is that the entire island is shaped like the skeleton of a Skullcrawler. Then there's this message from Randa, which seems to indicate that Kong's been facing something other than the Skullcrawlers and giant spiders, something that sounds terribly familiar...
  His mouth is fire; his roar the floodwater; his breath is death. Enlil made him guardian of the Cedar Forest, to frighten off the mortal who would venture there. BUT WHO WOULD VENTURE THERE?
• The massive graveyard containing the bones of Kong's parents. The Skullcrawlers were able to kill the adult parents of Kong!
  • The skeletons themselves are nothing short of titanic, looking as big as skyscrapers. And Kong isn't even fully grown yet...
• A new TV spot features a soldier falling from a helicopter...towards Kong's open mouth as he roars in anger.
  • And to remove any doubt, the voiceover for that moment is "...and that's not getting to the things that want to eat you alive."
• According to more viral marketing, one of the new creatures includes a gigantic octopus-like monster that is almost as large as Kong himself.
  • If you think about the rest of the creatures on the island, whatever is attached to those tentacles could be something much more than an octopus..
• Some new clips have been released, revealing things like new character development, Kong, and the Skullcrawlers. However, this brings up even more creepy things, such as;
  • A Skullcrawler up close, revealing its hundreds of sharp teeth.
  • Kong's entrance, which makes him look larger than the mountains surrounding him.
  • The Reveal that Randa had known about Kong the whole time, therefore knowing ahead of time that some people were bound to die. It almost makes one wonder how much MONARCH values human life over exterminating Kaiju.
• The viral tie-in website is just full of bowel-loosening information on the island's inhabitants that has to be read to be believed. Just check the section marked under cryptozoology.
  • For example, here is a direct quote from the bio on the giant spider/Mother Longlegs;
  The Mother Longlegs has evolved sharpened spikes at the end of its powerful legs. Eight razor-sharp blades rein down from above on unsuspecting prey, pinning them to the ground with a poisoned spur that immobilizes the victim and sucks vital nutrients from the body like a milkshake through a straw. These creatures are not just man-eaters. They drink their prey. Once immobilized, the creature's underbelly unleashes muscular tendrils that ensnare the victim and lift them high off the ground to be swallowed by the beast's open stomach.
  • To put this simply, imagine you're walking through a forest. And you bump into a tree, which looks slightly off, but isn't much different than the surrounding ones. But out of nowhere, one of the trees lifts itself up, and pins you down, slowly draining your fluids and paralyzing you. And if you're lucky enough to still be alive, you get lifted off the ground and swallowed. By a 23-foot-tall spider. Sweet dreams!

Post-Movie

• The arrival of the Mire Squid/Giant Octopus, which could easily give one thalassophobia.
  • To elaborate, Chapman was simply refilling his canteen in that lake, unaware the Mire Squid was lurking underneath and waiting for its next snack. And considering that some octopi do have the ability to camouflage themselves in real life, he wouldn't know it was there until it's too late.
• Out of all the horrible deaths of the humans in this movie, Chapman has to have one of the worst. He's in the forest, all alone, resting by a log... until it starts to shift.. and the gigantic Spore Mantis camouflaged as said log is revealed. Chapman assumes the gigantic insect is about to attack him, and starts to fire on it. After a while, the creature flees, and everything is fine.. Until the noises start, and the Skullcrawler attacks from behind him.
  • The worst thing about this is that later, the Skullcrawler spits out Chapman's bloody, half-digested skull, right in front of Conrad and the others.
  • Arguably the worst is the soldier manning the 50 caliber machine gun in the skeleton graveyard. He's knocked into the air, then, like a bug caught by a chameleon, snatched up by the Skullcrawler's tongue and quickly swallowed whole.
  • May be a close tie with another earlier in the movie, during the Kong versus Helicopters scene: a soldier ends up launched in the air by Kong, so high he smashes into the windshield of a helicopter, then his body slides upwards, and the sound effects clearly tell his body is shredded by the rotor.
• Everything about the Mother Longlegs scene, and the deaths of the soldiers. And while Chapman and others may have been eaten alive, the soldier takes the cake for the goriest death in the entire film. The leg of the Mother Longlegs steps down through an unwitting soldier, completely impaling him from his mouth down through his groin and into the ground. Jesus..
  • There's also the part in this scene that honestly came out of nowhere, where the Mother Longlegs opens up its stomach, and unleashes muscular tendrils and pincers down onto Mills. At least the guy who got impaled got what appeared to be an instantaneous death, but if they hadn't recovered their weapons from the helicopters, Mills would likely have been torn apart by a 23 foot spider..
  • Just the fact that it's a fucking 23-foot spider, if you already happen to not be a fan of the regular-sized variety.
• The death of Nieves, which really came out of nowhere as after some much needed sequences of uplifting scenes for our group, he gets snatched up and torn apart by a flock of Leafwings while he's still alive. The fact that the group realizes he's utterly screwed and just give up trying to shoot the Leafwings did not help whatsoever. Really, a stern reminder not to grow attached to anyone.
  • There's a shot where you see his arm getting torn off as he is swarmed by the things.
  • Made worse by the fact that as the camera cuts away from that scene, you can see that he's still alive as the things shred him to bits. He's screwed, but he's not going to get a quick death.
  • You can still hear him screaming while the other characters debate going back for him.
• The cave drawings at the ending. It's not scary when you get to Godzilla, Rodan, or Mothra.... it gets scary with GHIDORAH, the most horrible and evil Kaiju in the Godzilla mythos...
  • Worse? Ghidorah is depicted as towering over Godzilla and with what looks like skulls around him.
• The native's spike wall used to keep the Skullcrawlers out have almost all the spikes tipped with blood, as if the beasts have attacked the wall multiple times to get to the people inside. It gets worse when you realize that the reason the air is buzzing is because there's so many flies ... meaning that the blood is fresh.
• Remember from the trailers how Kong seemed like he was going to eat one particular soldier in the helicopter alive? Well, he DOES. The even worse thing is that before we see what fully happens, it cuts to a shot of one of the characters crunching down on a sandwich.
  • And even worse? Kong did this on purpose. He grabbed the helicopter the poor guy was in and dangled it over his mouth as he roared, even tilting it to knock the passengers loose.
• While this could count as a Moment of Awesome, the way Ramarak (the giant Skullcrawler) dies is horrible. Basically, Kong's hand (with an unconscious Weaver encased inside) is swallowed by Ramarak, and it seems Kong can't do anything... until he reaches further, and rips out the Skullcrawler's tongue, stomach, and intestines in one go.
• Packard's descent into complete insanity is pretty terrifying in its own right. This is a man whose response when confronted by a 30-meter tall, highly intelligent ape who destroyed half a dozen military helicopters with ease is to trek across a hellish island and pick a fight with said ape, in the face of advice from just about everyone around him. What's worse is he bullies and manipulates his men into going along, until they've finally had enough and turn on him. When he sets Kong on fire, he's the only one smiling, and he's doing it with himself framed in flame, just as he first saw Kong himself, showing he's become what he thought he was fighting all along.
  • The most terrifying part? Packard could have killed Kong. Yes, other than Ramarak, this human with just some preparation and the right tools practically had Kong dead to rights if it weren't for Conrad and the others stopping him from pulling the final blow.
• Past the horrible deaths, Packard's insanity, the after credits scene and the Skullcrawlers and other creatures, the most horrifying scene in the entire movie is the boneyard. Specifically, the scene right after Randa dies. First, he is swallowed whole with his camera in the stomach of the Skullcrawler, and it vanishes into the clouds of dust. The only thing that the audience and the characters are able to see are the brief flashes of the camera inside of the stomach of the creature, before it lunges at the camera. The music is also outright horrifying.
  • The worst thing about this is if you watch the movie in IMAX, where you can hear the sounds of the Skullcrawler slithering around you in the theater.
• The morality of Randa and MONARCH as a whole can be called into question when it is shown that he, and by definition the rest of MONARCH, knew about Kong's existence and possible hostility and still sent men in to bomb Skull Island, knowing it would flush him out and cost lives.
  • The point stands but it's more accurate to say they "suspected" Kong or monsters like him existed; they didn't really know much of anything more than myths and cave paintings. The lack of information and evidence was what was about to shut MONARCH down due to lack of funding.
• As mentioned in the Fridge Horror section of this page, these monsters aren't just like Godzilla or even the MUTO's, which are the last of their kind, and don't desire to directly harm humanity. Literally, all of the monsters shown in the movie are breeding populations, which directly attack and kill any character in sight. The worst part? The most heroic of these creatures is Kong, who killed dozens through one of the most brutal scenes in the entire movie.
• A minor example, but the moment when Randa talks about some unknown monster who attacked and killed all of his crew on a ship except for him. Once again, it's anybody's guess to which one it was.

Novelization

• Conrad’s reason for leaving the SAS, which involves a mission where two of his men and a seven-year-old girl he and his team were tasked with rescuing were killed by a bullet to their heads from a sniper as they were approaching the border. To Conrad, it felt like the mission was always meant to end in failure.
• Following Kong’s battle against the helicopters, Conrad tries to get to higher ground when he is attacked by a sixty-foot snake. It nearly constricts him to death, but he is able to kill it with his knife.
• After getting stranded, Conrad's party encounters a carnivorous plant with several dead animals inside, including "a wasp the size of Weaver’s hand."
• Iwi paintings depict a number of nightmarish creatures that include "giant reptilian beasts, one with three heads. A crocodile fifty feet long. Snake-like monsters, slinking from holes in the ground and snapping towards the sun. Web-footed creatures, spikes along their backs spearing bloodied human shapes, diving into the ocean surrounding the island."
  • "...one with three heads." Hmmm...who could that possibly be?
• When Chapman is killed by the Skullcrawler, Packard is on the radio with him and hears him being killed. Packard decides not to tell his men about it, going out of his way to put them in even more danger for the mere sake of acquiring more weapons.
• Instead of Ramarak pulling Kong's arm down its throat and being eviscerated, Kong punches down its throat and kills it by crushing its organs.
• Skullcrawlers can mimic human cries and this was the cause of Gunpei’s death, as he was killed by one after he and Marlow thought they heard an Iwi child scream in the distance and went to rescue them.
• Ramarak has a bladed tail and uses it to cut Kong. At one point, Ramarak raises its tail over its head “like a scorpion’s stinger” ready to finish Kong off.
• It's implied between Conrad and Marlow that Ramarak appears when it does because it sensed that Kong was down, meaning the Skullcrawler reveals itself at a time when Kong wouldn’t be in its way and everyone and everything on Skull Island would be defenseless against it.
• Kong’s wounds from Packard’s napalm trap are more severe as his fur continues to smolder in places and some patches are completely burnt off, exposing raw flesh underneath.