Perfect mascots in family films, faithful companions to humans, and even heroes: animals are always reassuring figures. However, cinema has repeatedly decided to overturn this narrative, transforming the image of the animals most familiar to us into protagonists of disturbing and grotesque stories.
Here is a list of titles that have contributed to turning the most adorable creatures into… a real nightmare.
The Birds (1963)
Alfred Hitchcock could not resist the classic monster of the werewolf. The wolf is not an animal we see every day in familiar surroundings. Birds are: their symbolism as a bridge between earth and sky, life and death, made them a disturbing antagonist in The Birds. In the film, flocks of birds begin to attack people for no apparent reason: nature’s revenge against human arrogance is unexpected. Human frailty in the face of such bloody but inexplicable phenomena comes to the fore. A classic psychological horror film.
Pet Sematary (2019)
The ambiguous nature of cats has made them diabolical beings even in cinema. Associated with bad omens or, more trivially, with stories of witches, felines went from being revered in ancient Egypt to being persecuted in the Middle Ages. They have continued to feature in disturbing stories on the big screen, but Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, took this to extremes. Church is the Creed family’s cat: one day, he is hit by a truck and, despite the seven lives cats are said to have, the animal dies. However, burial in an ancient Indian burial ground inexplicably brings him back to life, but Church is no longer the same. This is only the first disturbing sign that something deeply wrong is about to befall the Creed family, guilty of trying to defy death. King’s classic was remade in 2019, satisfying audiences despite taking some liberties with the original material. A few years later, the universe was expanded with the prequel Pet Sematary: Bloodlines: what does Stephen King think?
Cujo (1983)
Stephen King and animals have a complicated relationship: his novels are full of scenes of violence against animals. The king of horror took his experimentation to a whole new level with Cujo: a St. Bernard, usually a docile dog that saves humans, becomes a violent, murderous monster in the novel due to a rabies infection. From King’s pages to Lewis Teague’s film in an ambitious adaptation. Maintaining the fast pace of the narrative was not easy, but Teague succeeds in this horror film, with no small effort.
Lamb (2021)
Lamb is one of those folk horror films you should see at least once in your life. The line between nightmare and tenderness is very blurred here because Valdimar Jóhannsson plays with a lamb/human hybrid. Two Icelandic farmers discover that one of their sheep has given birth to an incredible creature: a lamb’s head and right arm and a human body. Perhaps a sign of destiny after the death of their first daughter? The two begin to care for it, and this is where the viewer’s doubt is fueled: is it incredibly tender or incredibly disturbing? The film never explodes into overly accentuated horror nuances but insinuates a constant tension.
