Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys Is the Series’ Best (Accidental) Horror Movie

While it’s clear it wasn’t intentional, Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys taps into many horror tropes that can easily frighten even the most hardened fan.

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The Pokémon franchise is no stranger to scary stuff, though usually it’s in more of a “save the world” type of way. However, the anime’s seventh movie, Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys, takes things in a… different direction, opting for a more classically horror style — if unintentionally.

While much of the film is fun and lighthearted, with an emotional thru-line that follows movie-exclusive character Tory attempting to get over his fear of Pokémon, there is another lens to view the film through that turns it into a much more frightening affair.

The story starts with what many good horror movies do — an alien, or in this case, a Pokémon from outer space crash-landing on Earth. While the ending of the film makes it apparent that the Deoxys is simply searching for its lost friend, Rayquaza doesn’t know that — and doesn’t care. Acting more like the force of nature it represents, it battles the DNA Pokémon in what can only be described for the human researchers nearby as a natural disaster. Neither Pokémon demonstrates any awareness or care for the people caught in the crossfire, and the battle only ends because Rayquaza manages to defeat the space invader, forcing it to store up energy for four years to regenerate fully.

During the pair’s battle, it’s handily established that Deoxys sees through electrical pulses rather than light, like most creatures — which makes the high-tech city of LaRousse, where its friend’s core is being kept… a problem. Almost immediately upon arriving in the city, it attacks the local Pokémon and messes with city systems, wreaking havoc for the people living there and once again alerting Rayquaza (who apparently doesn’t think beating it once is enough) to its position.

This puts the city and its people into imminent life-threatening danger as a second clash of the titans could topple entire buildings, destroy city streets and separate people from their families in the chaos and blackout, not entirely unlike the 2005 adaption of War of the Worlds — though the damage is more collateral than maliciously intentional. An evacuation is immediately called, uprooting hundreds if not thousands of unprepared people and Pokémon, creating fear and uncertainty.

Making matters worse, is the fact that the evacuation doesn’t happen fast enough. With so many people taking to the streets and cluttering Deoxys’ vision, it takes matters into its own hands, creating copies of itself to snatch up all those pesky people, picking them off one by one in an unstoppable swarm, which, for all these people know of Deoxys, is exactly like the aforementioned War of the Worlds. The threat of death is most certainly real, and the clones even manage to pare down the main cast. Couple that with a force field that suddenly engulfs the city, trapping many and preventing help from arriving, and the situation couldn’t appear direr — until it’s revealed that communications with the outside world are also jammed.

Not even PokéBalls are working, creating a different horror unique to the Pokémon world. For Ash and company, not only can they not call on their Pokémon friends for help, but should the PokéBalls remain stuck, their beloved pals may be trapped forever.

The movie even has jump-scares set up while the heroes learn about Deoxys, with Max suggesting that it may be able to get in through a crack in the wall — just before a vent begins to vibrate. While this turns out to be the harmless trio of Plusle, Minun and Munchlax, it’s still an incredibly tense moment.

While the some of the heroes struggle to find food and water, focusing on survival, the others follow the clones and finally reveal to the audience that no, no one’s actually been hurt — just captured and held against their will. Soon enough though, the clones track down the heroes and attack their stronghold, forcing them to retreat underground. Here, the frantic, high-pitched soundtrack sells the fear and apprehension as they run for their freedom, though the movie veers swiftly back into the action-adventure territory by revealing that Tory’s green-light friend is actually a second Deoxys, and that all of Deoxys’ actions have been in service of reuniting with it.

While the explanation of Deoxys’ actions removes the fear and shows off the movie’s true theme of friendship, the fact remains that for a good portion of the runtime, the threat Deoxys unintentionally created also turned Destiny Deoxys into the series’ best unintentional horror flick.

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