The 15 best films about killer animals

We’ll definitely start with a dog movie. This horror film, based on a Stephen King novel, is simple and stressful in its storytelling. Also, when Cujo gets bitten by the rabid bat, we do feel bad for him. The St. Bernard was a friendly, gentle giant before that. When he gets rabid, though, he becomes a vicious, violent terror, trapping a woman and her son in their car.

It only makes sense to get to the foremost killer-animal movie ever made as quickly as possible. Hell, “Jaws” is one of the foremost movies ever made, full stop. The film launched Steven Spielberg’s career, and also launched the modern idea of the summer blockbuster. And, of course, “Jaws” also gave a lot of people a fear of sharks that was somewhat misplaced. This shark, though, was definitely one to fear.

“Jaws” also, unsurprisingly, spawned many imitators. The best of those is “Piranha.” Spielberg himself gave his blessing to this Roger Corman production. Instead of one killer shark, there are a bunch of killer piranhas. Notably, this was the first proper feature film directed by Joe Dante. He would later collaborate with Spielberg on “Gremlins.”

For the purposes of this list, we’re happy to label bugs as animals. Spiders are one of the most-feared creatures there are. Now, imagine there were a bunch of them, some giant, some poisonous, all dangerous. “Arachnophobia” is also notable in that it is a horror-comedy, with John Goodman’s aggro exterminator generating a lot of the laughs.

If you want an all-killer, no-filler animal-centric horror movie, give “Crawl” a watch. It’s only 87 minutes long, and after the slightest preamble to set the table, it puts the pedal to the metal and rips right through. A high school swimmer goes to check on her estranged father because a hurricane is hitting Florida, and she finds him both injured and surrounded by droves of alligators. And also, again, a hurricane is happening.

Okay, so the crocodile in “Lake Placid” is gigantic, but it’s only double the size of your average large crocodile. That falls within the parameters of movie magic without crossing into science fiction. “Lake Placid” isn’t “Them!” for example. Additionally, this is a vulgar, breezy horror-comedy. Betty White swears and stuff. Let’s not hold it to unreasonable standards.

Alfred Hitchcock had a tremendous interest in mistaken identities, people being accused of crimes they didn’t commit, and icy blondes. What he didn’t seem to be terribly preoccupied with is animals. That makes “The Birds” stand out in his filmography. A man who mostly made suspense thrillers made one of his few straight-up horror movies. “Psycho” has twists and turns and interpersonal intrigue. “The Birds” is, “What if a bunch of birds started attacking people in a town for no reason?” That is not a criticism.

No (pe), we aren’t including extraterrestrial life, which is to say that if you haven’t seen this movie, which we’d call Jordan Peele’s best, you have a chance to avoid spoilers. The dangerous violence that simmers below the surface with many animals is something of a theme, best exemplified in the story of the Haywoods’ neighbor, amusement park impresario Ricky “Jupe” Park. Ricky had been a child actor on a sitcom called “Gordy’s Home,” co-starring with a chimpanzee. While the chimp may have been able to wear clothes and do some funny bits, all it took was one startling experience with balloons for the chimp to launch into a violent rampage.

“The Edge” was written by David Mamet, so of course, there is plenty of man vs. man in it. However, this survival thriller also has plenty of man vs. animal. Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin play two Mamet-ian Yelling Men who survive a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness. As they try to make their way back to safety, they are stalked by a Kodiak bear.

“Liam Neeson” fights wolves. It’s what “The Grey” was sold on. Now, there is less Liam Neeson fighting wolves than promised by the marketing for “The Grey.” Fret not, though, there are wolves. There is Liam Neeson. There is fighting.

“Moby Dick” is one of the most-famous animals in all of fiction. He is the titular character of Herman Melville’s defining work of American literature. It’s impressive that the book has had such a cultural impact, because it is a million pages long and has so much whale stuff in it. This film adaptation, the best of the bunch, pares “Moby Dick” down to a hair under two hours. Also, the deck was stacked. Not only does Gregory Peck play Ahab, the ship captain obsessed with revenge against Moby Dick, but John Huston directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Ray Bradbury.

“Open Water” was made for $500,000, isn’t quite 80 minutes long, and surely launched a million stress dreams. A couple is a part of a group scuba diving expedition, but when the crew of the boat messes up, the couple is left behind. Not only are the two miles from the shore, but the waters are teeming with sharks. There have been a couple of “sequels,” but those have been more of the “cheap horror movie drafting off the name recognition of the first film” variety.

Okay, we wanted to include one fantastical animal movie. If you’re going to do that, it has to be the original King Kong. It’s not just the giant gorilla, either. There are all sorts of killer animals and dangerous creatures on Skull Island. Sure, a lot of them are dinosaurs, which we said don’t count, but there is enough in the mix here for, you know, one of the most-important movies ever made, so we figured we’d include it.

Be it the original film or the loosely-connected sequels (one of which is surprisingly fun), killer animals abound in the world of “Jumanji.” Granted, in the sequels, the animals exist in a video game the protagonists are trapped in, but those animals can kill you, and those deaths have consequences. On top of that, though, in “Jumanji” it’s a board game that brings things to life, and that includes killer animals coming out of the game and into the real world.

We will end by shouting out all the bad, but fun, killer animal movies. These films aren’t among the best killer-animal movies, quality-wise. They are silly and dumb, though, in a way we enjoy. “Snakes on a Plane” became one of the quintessential examples of this once people found out there was a movie called “Snakes on a Plane.” It didn’t live up to the hype, but there’s also “Deep Blue Sea,” and “The Meg” and, we hope, this new take on “Anaconda.”