I have a race of evil aliens in my story, who I feel have to power to be very scary. But they could also have distinct personalities, but giving personalities to them will probably take away the air of mystery about them, and the fear of them will be lessened. For example, would the bogey man be more scary if it observed without a word, or if it had a personality and was very talkative? The personality would probably make them more interesting, but if they were silent then they would be more creepy. What are people's opinions on this?
My opinion is yes, they definitely would benefit in scariness if you not dig too deep into their personalities, but then it depends on what effect you want to achieve. sometimes a more thorough portrait is in its place and sometimes the scarier and mysterious the more convincing. I guess it depends on the genre.
Depends on what makes them scary. the creatures in the Alien movies are scary because they're simply predatory, parasitic creatures that as humans we don't have the ability to empathise with. ... but Darth Vader would have lost his scariness early in the Star Wars movies if his whole schtick was simply "big scary man in a mask". His scariness was that you knew what his motivations were and the more you learned about the Empire the more corrupt it was.
Who do you think is scarier, Freddy Kreuger or Jason Vorheas? That's really the best analogy I can think of to help you.
