Happy Halloween week everyone! In observance of the holiday, it’s time for a spooky Magic article. Magic has a long history of designing cards and sets with horror themes. In fact, in the earliest days of Magic classic horror characters were lifted directly from the page and turned into Magic cards – like Frankenstein’s Monster and Headless Horseman.
This practice of using real-world literary figures was later abandoned, but sets and cards were still designed with specific horror references in mind. This is most notable with Innistrad, with our various visits to the plane focusing on a variety of horror genres. Gothic horror is the focus in the original Innistrad Block, but we got some Lovecraftian horror in Eldritch Moon and folk horror in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt.
Stitcher Geralf, his lab, and his creations are all direct references to the Gothic Horror novel “Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus,” where the eponymous scientist uses electricity to reanimate a stitched together corpse.
Just last year, we visited a new horror plane – Duskmourn. This story focused on a powerful demon taking over an entire plane and turning it into a house of horror where people’s fears were made manifest. This was the first horror set to focus entirely on modern horror. In other words, it’s a plane inspired by real-world horror movies – the exact kinds of movies people watch this time of year. As such, this set is filled with references to popular horror films, and in this article I’m going to give you my picks for the 10 best such references.
ORPHANS OF THE WHEAT
Some of the cards in Duskmourn make a very obvious reference to a film and Orphans of the Wheat is one of those. It uses its art, its flavor text, and even its name to reference the 1984 film Children of the Corn. One of many horror films based on the work of Stephen King, it’s about a malevolent being in a rural American town who makes children ritually murder their parents so that there can be a good corn harvest.
Orphans of the Wheat seem to be experiencing something similar. The crop is different, but they’re hiding out in a field and I think we can assume they are orphans from murdering their parents. In this case, the malevolent entity is likely the main antagonist of Duskmourn – Valgavoth, an incredibly powerful demon.
ARABELLA, ABANDONED DOLL
People have long been creeped out by dolls. After all, they look quite a bit like us but they look just enough different for that to be extra unsettling. Killer dolls have been scaring people on screen since at least 1963, when an episode of Twilight Zone called “Living Doll” aired, and over the years they have only become more frightening.
Like Orphans of the Wheat, Arabella, Abandoned Doll doesn’t leave any doubt about what film and character it references. After all, its name closely resembled that of Annabelle, the eponymous killer doll from a 2014 film.
UNSTOPPABLE SLASHER
Not all Duskmourn cards reference a super specific movie. Others reference modern horror tropes more broadly, and Unstoppable Slasher is one of those. In horror movies, a “slasher” is a character who uses some sort of sharp implement to murder people, often in a very graphic way.
While movies like Psycho (1960) featured regular murderous people in this type of role, starting with Halloween (1978), it was more common for these slashers to also have otherworldly abilities – including supernatural endurance that makes it incredibly difficult to stop them.
Unstoppable Slasher’s entire body is one of these sharp instruments, and its effect feels very much like you’re trying to take down Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers, because even if you take it down once, it’s going to keep on coming.
FOUND FOOTAGE
“Found Footage” is another horror subgenre. In this style of film, the very movie you watch is claimed to be footage recorded by someone who has died or disappeared, and watching the film helps you understand what happened to them – and of course, the answer is always horrifying. All the more so because you are seeing everything from the perspective of someone that you already know is doomed.
While the genre existed before 1999’s Blair Witch Project, that’s the movie that really made this subgenre known to general audiences.
THE JOLLY BALLOON MAN
The fear of clowns is very common, and the horror genre has definitely tapped into that fear in many ways over the years. It’s no coincidence that Duskmourn was the first non Un-set to feature the creature type. While all three clowns in the set are seriously disturbing, The Jolly Balloon Man is a direct reference to the most horrifying clown in the history of media – Pennywise from the It franchise.
This is another character created by Stephen King. He’s a shapeshifting interdimensional being that can take the form of people’s fears, and he often appears as a clown holding a balloon. The Jolly Balloon Man is also a clown with an affinity for balloons.
Notably, the actual appearance of his balloons might actually be a reference to a horror manga by Junji Ito called The Hanging Balloons, which features similarly grotesque human heads as balloons. This has even been adapted into a short anime that you can find on an anthology of Ito’s stories on Netflix, if you really want to be creeped out.
HAUNTED SCREEN
Haunted Screen is a reference to one of the most iconic scenes in the history of horror films. In the 1982 horror film Poltergeist, a young girl starts conversing with a television that is displaying only static. Her parents don’t think much of it at first, but then a series of strange events start occurring, including natural disasters. Eventually, several poltergeists emerge from the television, with the little girl famously exclaiming, “They’re here!”
It takes some times, but Haunted Screen can eventually turn into a ghost, and the art on the card even showcases a television with static and a ghost emerging from it. Haunted Screen can even only tap for black or white mana without paying life – so it’s even a Black and White television, like in Poltergeist.
CURSED RECORDING
The seventh and final Duskmourn card I want to look at is Cursed Recording. It’s a reference to the 1998 Japanese Horror Film Ring. In that movie, there’s a cursed video tape that has tons of cryptic scenes on it, and anyone who watches it dies 7 days later, when a frightening ghost emerges from the television and murders those who have watched it.
Cursed Recording might have the best flavor of any card on this list (although Unstoppable Slash IS pretty good), because it’s an artifact that gains time counters, and once there are seven or more of those on it, it deals 20 damage to you. In other words, the curse gets you 7 days later.
END STEP
If your desire for spooky Magic content hasn’t been sated, I’ve written a couple of other articles this year that are Halloween-themed, and so have the other writers here at Card Kingdom! You can also check out my Halloween-themed MTG Top 10s over on YouTube.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.