I fell in love with Pokémon as a kid, and like many others, I never really grew out of that phase. Whenever Nintendo launches a new mainline game, I'm always quick to grab a copy and start playing. Adulthood has done nothing to dull my love of that classic Pokémon formula.
But I realized recently that while I've continued playing Pokémon as I've aged, I did stop watching Pokémon at some point along the way. When the anime first came out when I was a kid, I woke early to watch every episode on TV before going to school. I was so hyped when the first Pokémon movie was announced! Then at some point in my transition to adulthood, I just lost interest.
It was this very thought that spurred me to do a rewatch of the first season that had hooked me so long ago, hoping to rekindle some of that childhood magic. But what I found was a three-episode arc that got me thinking about what I'd actually want from a more adult-focused Pokémon movie or TV series: A lot more horror.
The specific episodes I'm talking about are 21-23, starting with "Abra and the Psychic Showdown." This is the arc in which Ash has to overcome the Psychic-type Gym Leader in Saffron City to earn his next badge. What he encounters is an extremely powerful girl named Sabrina who has seemingly lost her marbles. When he loses his first battle against her, she shrinks him and his friends down to doll-size, places them in a little town, and then tries to straight-up murder them with a toy ball.
Seems pretty intense for a kids' show, right? It only gets darker as we learn more about Sabrina's life. After accidentally turning her mother into a doll as a child, she split part of her personality into a creepy puppet and basically lost her mind. Ash is later able to defeat her and help save her family using the power of laughter (via Haunter), which certainly softens up the ending of this story, but it's still some pretty wild lore leading up to that.
As a kid, I absolutely loved these kinds of details and it made playing the game that much more fun and interesting. Rewatching as an adult, however, it just makes me want more of this kind of thing from the franchise. There's so much room to dive into the darker side of Pokémon, and I can't help but think psychological horror would be the most natural way to go.
What Could a Pokémon Horror Movie Look Like?
It's easy to forget that Pokémon aren't just adorable little companions; they are literally monsters. It's right there in the name! These are terrifying creatures with supernatural powers that have canonically killed people. Humanity may be able to coexist with them via superior technology, but that doesn't take away from the fear they can potentially invoke.
Psychological horror seems like the obvious direction for an adult Pokémon movie because the franchise has already shown just how terrifying Psychic abilities can be. The Sabrina arc in the first season of the anime was just a taste of what that could look like, but the first movie was where it really escalated.
Pokémon: The First Movie is where we get introduced to the iconic 151st Pokémon on screen. Scientists cloned one of the most powerful creatures on the planet to create him, and of course that backfired on them. Determined to prove his superiority to humanity and natural Pokémon, Mewtwo breaks free from the lab where he was created and decides to lure strong trainers to an island to clone their Pokémon into "better" versions of themselves.
In an effort to create a believable invitation to his island, Mewtwo showcases the ability to take over Nurse Joy's mind and completely control her. Then, at the end of the film after everything is resolved (this time with the power of friendship), Mewtwo decides to just completely wipe everyone's memories of the island. These are two pretty terrifying abilities that naturally lend themselves to the horror genre. Add in Mewtwo's powerful telekinesis and ability to manipulate the weather and there's a lot to work with here.
You could have Mewtwo discovering his powers by subtly manipulating those around him before eventually breaking free and slowly murdering everyone involved with telekinesis.
As for how this could translate into an actual horror film, I think leaning into how the Alien franchise has approached its Alien: Earth series makes a lot of sense here. With Mewtwo's origin story, we see him breaking free and destroying the lab, but the events leading up to that with the scientists and actual cloning process seem like they are ripe for psychological horror. You could have Mewtwo discovering his powers by subtly manipulating those around him before eventually breaking free and slowly murdering everyone involved with telekinesis. The idea of a highly intelligent and deadly being slowly degrading your false sense of security before murdering you is a pretty terrifying concept.
While Mewtwo's path seems like a solid direction to take, pretty much any psychic Pokémon has a potentially horrifying story that could be told. Hypno has been known to hypnotize people and eat their dreams, for example. And don't even get me started on Mr. Mime. The Detective Pikachu movie may have leaned into comedy with it, but you can't deny the natural creepiness a psychic clown mime evokes. This guy looks like he has done some messed up things for sure.
With the amount of detail that has already been invested in these characters over the years, it certainly doesn't feel like a stretch to make the jump to horror. If an R-rated Mewtwo origin story were to get announced tomorrow, I'm pretty confident adult fans would be absolutely hyped for it. So what's stopping the franchise from taking that step?
Will a Pokémon Horror Movie Ever Actually Happen?
As much as I would like to get a Pokémon horror movie in my lifetime, there are certainly some key reasons why it hasn't already happened. The franchise is known for its family-friendly image and has used that image to make millions of people fall in love with the idea of pocket monsters. Tarnishing that family-friendly facade with an R-rated film depicting the darker side of Pokémon may not make sense from a business perspective.
It's not impossible that Pokémon could eventually lean further in favor of its adult audience. The Pokémon TCG market has become more of an adult hobby these days and many fans of the franchise are indeed getting older. If the fanbase starts to skew further away from kids in the future, it's definitely possible the content could shift as well. We've seen this happen with other family-friendly franchises, like the Archie Comics, which branched out to Archie Horror back in 2013. That was 74 years after the comics first launched, of course, but Pokémon is practically halfway there already.
If the Pokémon Company doesn't make the pivot to horror on its own, the other option is to wait for the copyright to expire and enter the public domain. This happened fairly recently with Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which maybe isn't the best example of a good horror adaptation. Unfortunately, due to U.S. copyright laws, that won't happen for Pokémon for another 65 years. And because Trademark law allows the Pokémon Company to retain the rights to the word Pokémon and and any of the characters, someone would have to get pretty creative to legally make something happen.
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