Horror about animals: from a pet to a vicious monster - one shot

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Since ancient times, man avoided wild animals, meeting with such creatures caused him unconscious fear. Of course, this feature of the human psyche could not help but take advantage of the directors of horror films. They masterfully studied all sorts of zoophobias and began to churn out films with scary stories based on our most common childhood horror stories.

At the same time, the especially gifted fell into a viciously gloomy pessimism and at first glance managed to turn a rather harmless reading into a chilling picture. And the viewer, when viewing such a picture, trying to force out the overwhelming feeling of fear, eats bags of popcorn and even gets to the upholstery of the chair.

Classifying phobias

Horror about animals even have their own classification, and sharks and piranhas are the leaders in it: "Jaws", "Peter Benchley's Creature", "Shark Monster", "Deep Blue Sea", "Piranhas", "River Monsters" " andetc.

Slightly inferior to wolves, dogs and cats, in this category, of course, "Pet Cemetery" is in the lead, followed by "Wolves", "Kujo", "Pack", "Dogs", "Cat" and others. Rats and other mammals do not lose ground: "Rats", "Night Shift", "Rats - Nights of Horrors", "Killer Shrews", "Boar Cleaver", "Rabbit Night", "Black Sheep". From the air, unfortunate people are attacked by birds: “Birds”, “Killing Trip”, “Crow”, “Attack of Birds”. Crocodiles and snakes do not sleep: “Killer Crocodile”, “Eaten Alive”, “Predatory Waters”, “Lake of Fear”, “Reptile”, “Anaconda”, “Mamba”, “Vipers”, “Snake Venom”, “Python ". Spiders weave a deadly web: "Tarantula", "Nets", "Spider Island Horrors", followed by flies: "Fly", "Curse of the Fly", ants: "Them", "Phase 4", "Bone Thief" and cockroaches: Beetles, Nest, Horror Kaleidoscope and more.

For showiness

Quite often horrors about animals are a combination of several film genres, fantasy is added to horror. And then the creators have a unique opportunity to realize their unbridled fantasy, to ignore the laws of physics and biology. And we are not even talking about films about mutant animals, although there are a great many of them: "The Bite of Death" (a mutant jellyfish), "Leechs", "Tremors", "Thaw", etc. Horrors about animals give the director the right to endow the most ordinary animals with magical properties: worms fly, penetrate everywhere along the water supply, a crocodile quickly crawls out ofanother victim from the drain tank, and in the closet (uninhabited pantry) the spider is waiting for the careless inhabitant. At the same time, at the end of the film, you can unobtrusively hint that the creature is a victim of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant or genetic experiments of a secret government laboratory for the study or breeding of paranormal plankton. This is how the world's best animal horror movies appear.

2013 is no exception

The past year has also become very prolific for such film masterpieces. The film “Squirrels” should be considered the most mysterious film, its director T. Bekmambetov managed to turn kind and gentle animals into ruthless killer mutants. "Shark Tornado" will please the viewer with an extraordinary construction of the storyline. Perhaps after watching the audience will be somewhat discouraged, and the horrors about animals that they knew before will seem to them just children's fairy tales. The creators of the film "Down" ruthlessly let the youth company feed on unknown fish, and the director of "Deadly Descent" raised the once again popular Bigfoot theme. Which horror film about animals in 2013 will become popular, and which one will sink into the abyss of obscurity, is not yet clear.