Getting Wild: Horrific Animals

Though the genre is full of scary human and supernatural terrors, the biggest threats are often the most natural… when horror goes wild.

Nature doesn’t make mistakes; that’s what makes its creations so perfectly deadly and terrifying.

We might be at the top of the food chain because of our smarts, but in brutal nature, I don’t think we stand much of a chance against the forces of land and sea. While we’ve done a good job of inventing monsters (the wolf becomes the werewolf, a giant becomes Sasquatch), the world has provided us plenty of nightmare fuel in the form of elegant and lethal creatures that stalk all the corners of our world.

I did a little digging — from the classic shark tale that makes you nervous to dip a toe into frenzied wild boar killing in the Australian outback to the hungry wolf packs stalking the wooded snow.

I’m sure there is a movie for just about every animal. Still, I’ve found places for the ones we see every day or live near, or sometimes go out of our way to see on a safari, and compiled a list of wild scares provided by the world’s most frightening, efficient, and deadly animals, fish and insects that horror has to offer, from the tiny spider to the proud lion.

Do you have a special film you turn to when you want to get wild? Leave your contribution in the comments and help build this list of horrific animals!

1. Bears (Cocaine Bear/Back Country/Annihilation)

You can find them on this continent, and you may easily find them rummaging through your trash in some parts of the country. Hulking, growling, and plodding, bears are unpredictable, deadly animals that have conquered mountains and forests.

Horror seemed to recognize the danger and the possibility of using stories involving the ferocious beast to give us a new fear of the trees and caves. Cocaine Bear (2023) was a true story retold about a black bear in TN who consumes cocaine, but instead of dying like the news story, the bear becomes an addict. Running and tearing, the cocaine bear is a hyped-up version of the predator but was true to the “mother bear” saying, demonstrating how defensive animals are of their young.

Frightening but funny, I don’t think I’d stand a chance against a cocaine bear, let alone a normal one.

In the same vein of recreating this animal and its capabilities is Annihilation (2018). In the scene in which this mutant variant bear can mimic the screams of its previous victims, we are faced with a familiar shape and teeth, but the biome has made this bear all the more horrifying as it sniffs, paws, and ponders the attack.

Away from fantasy are films like Back Country (2014). A couple camping is hunted ruthlessly by a black bear, which inevitably leads to a sacrificial choice, leaving time for a tragic escape. A closer-to-home, more realistic version of the consequences of trespassing in nature, Back Country is a slow burn to a terrifying conclusion where the trees never end, and what’s chasing you is hot on your scent.

2. Piranha (Piranha 3D)

Mean little fish that run in a school and have more teeth than patience, piranha are deadly in the wild, and we have the videos to prove it.

Going to smaller fish than sharks, the remake Piranha 3D is based on the 1978 horror comedy Piranha. Following a young man taking care of his siblings over a crowded spring break, we get all the girls gone wild action of a spring breaker movie with all the gore of any creature feature.

The fish are a deadly, comical plague, eating up spring break one floatie at a time and turning the waters of the town bright red.

3. Dogs (Cujo, Gerald’s Game)

Based on Stephen King’s 1981 novel of the same name, Cujo (1983) was barking, snarling chaos at the hands of man’s best friend. Bitten by a rabid bat, Cujo was once a family pet, a loving St. Bernard slobbering on the hands of his owners. When Cujo attacks while only mother and son are present, leaving them to take refuge in a car, it’s up to the two former pet owners to find a way out of Cujo’s path.

King seems to enjoy dogs being frightening, as he brings another dog into the story of Gerald’s Game (2017). On a weekend to rekindle romance in a remote cabin, Gerald’s Game is another King tale adapted from his 1992 novel of the same name, once thought impossible to present in movie format.

Starring Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood, one of the many factors that torment Jessie Burlingame (Gugino) is a dog that enters the house and begins feeding on her husband’s remains. Night after night, the dog grows bolder, and Jessie needs to find a way to free herself or end up dead at the hands of time or one of the many foes that pay her a visit.

Making a simple dog frightening, King was up to the challenge of taking house pets and making them feral and formidable.

4. Chimps (Nope, The Fall of the House of Usher)

In a film about extraterrestrials, we find a horror story buried within it about the destruction our distant relatives can cause when left unchecked.

Intelligent and awfully strong, chimps are usually viewed as docile and communicative instead of violent and frightening. In Peele’s smash hit Nope (2022), Steven Yeun plays a particularly scarred character. The owner of his own theme park, Ricky “Jupe” Park, was on a sitcom featuring a chimp when he was younger. One day, the animal gets violent, and we get bits and pieces of the attack as Jupe hides from the ape.

Bloody yet somehow playful, Gordy the chimp only got one outburst before he was killed by police.

On the smaller screen, we look at Mike Flanagan’s work again in The Fall of the House of Usher. The death of Camille is at the hands of chimpanzees that maul her face clean off, the act and aftermath we are mostly spared of but the message is delivered in the lab howling with caged chimps: these animals are not experimental, they are nearly human, and sometimes lethal.

5. Boars (Boar)

One of those singular films that takes you off guard, Boar (2017) is the tale of a wild boar in the outback that goes off the rails.

The Australian film follows a family in the countryside that attracts the attention of a wild boar that begins a snarling rampage. A deadly and unpredictable animal in real life that we don’t often encounter, Boar dug deep into those squealing pits of pigs we think of when we imagine someone disposing of remains and took an intelligent, out-of-the-norm animal selection and made it rabid enough to deliver some scares.

Deadlier than a pig den, Boar is a hunting, snarling outback element we should likely avoid upsetting.

6. Lions (Beast, The Ghost and the Darkness)

Lions, isolated oceans away, the king of the jungle. You don’t often see lions save the MGM introduction, but recently, we got a taste of bloody action regarding the predator.

Beast (2022) took certified action star Idris Elba and put him front and center in this survival action horror focusing on a widowed father and his two daughters touring South Africa. On a game reserve, it seems things are under control, but Elba will have to square off with a rogue man-eater that begins stalking him and his family.

If we head back to 1996, we find a chronicle on the Tsavo Man-Eaters, two lions that terrorized railroad workers in East Africa in the late 1800s. The Ghost and the Darkness is a historical adventure film featuring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas in the title roles of this fictionalized retelling of the lion attacks.

A trip down a dark historical alley and a foray with some based on a true story, The Ghost and the Darkness is a slow but worthy retelling of the impossible historical hunt that took place where man was the prey in question.

7. Sharks (Deep Blue Sea, The Meg, The Shallows, No Way Up)

I stayed away from selecting Jaws and instead collected some more fish food from the other offerings horror has on sharks.

Deep Blue Sea (1999) rounded out the 90s with some fiendish genetically engineered sharks that hunt, swim, and eat like machines. Cast with a group of comical A-Listers at the time, you can expect to see some hijinks like a shark jumping through a pool and one bite snagging a person off of dry land to the unexpected survival of L.L. Cool J and his bird companion.

Meanwhile, with more timely shark movies available, The Meg (2018) offers some action regarding sharks, taking bigger to mean better and not always hitting the mark. Featuring action man Jason Statham taking on a juggernaut of the seas, it’s an easy way to get a little nervous about dipping your toe in the water, but with enough distance between fantasy and reality that you won’t be scarred.

In the thriller category, led by a face we don’t usually see in horror, The Shallows (2016) takes Blake Lively to the rocks by shore and circles her with an unbeatable foe. Injured and trying to plan an escape, Lively is at odds with nature and its occupants while she is so close to shore but so far from safety.

Finally, you’ve heard of snakes on a plane, but now we have sharks on a plane. This year, the film No Way Up (2024) dropped, and though it didn’t make much of a splash, it still rested a crashed plane in an ocean ravine and surrounded it (and sometimes filled it) with man-eating sharks as oxygen levels dip. Do you need to see sharks on a plane? Probably not. Do you want to see sharks on a plane? Maybe…

8. Alligators/Crocodiles (Lake Placid, X, Crawl)

A living dinosaur, alligators are primordial in nature, slowly caressing the water’s surface or resting gently beneath it, waiting. Horror is ripe with gators and crocs, and Lake Placid (1999) did it early and biggest. The same year as our intelligent sharks of Deep Blue Sea, Lake Placid brought an impossible creature, the saltwater crocodile, to a place it wouldn’t usually hunt.

30 feet long and capable of devouring a bear, Lake Placid put size and power into play like creature features tend to, misplacing a creature meant for warmer waters among unfamiliar swimmers.

X took gators a little less seriously, with a single one seeming to serve its purpose in the swamps outside a Texas farm. We see in X that Pearl uses the gators as a means of disposal, leaving poor Brittany Snow wet, angry, and soon devoured.

For all-out alligator mayhem, though, I recommend Crawl (2019). Featuring a soaked and stranded Kaya Scodelario, the rising waters lead to a feeding frenzy of gators washed towards the mainland when a hurricane strikes Florida. Tense and swarming with hungry monsters just below the surface, Crawl was a satisfying enough survival story with plenty at stake.

9. Birds (The Birds, Kaw)

One of the most well-known and infamous creature features came from way back when from one of the horror maestros himself. Alfred Hitchcock adapted 1963’s The Birds from a 1952 short story of the same name. The film starred Rod Taylor and featured Tippi Hedren’s big-screen debut alongside names like Jessica Tandy.

Chronicling violent, unprovoked attacks from birds on civilians, The Birds takes place in Bodega Bay, CA, where citizens watch the skies for birds that have gone violent. An absolute classic for the film as a whole and horror especially, The Birds is unmistakable creature feature work at its finest, taking the dainty flap of wings and making them sinister.

On the less subtle and less famous side of birds is Kaw (2006), a direct-to-TV movie starring the likes of Sean Patrick Flanery from last year’s Nefarious. An international co-production, this Sci-Fi Pictures original picture seems to be an homage to The Birds as it tells of a town under attack from a hostile flock of ravens.

Bringing back Rod Taylor to star alongside the talented bunch, Kaw isn’t much to look at, but it was a nod to the brilliant and absurd Hitchcockian story.

10. Snakes (Anaconda, Snakes on a Plane)

Writhing and wriggling snakes can make people’s skin crawl just by looking at them, and their harsh rattlers and razor-wire fangs make them even less appealing.

Hopping on the bandwagon of larger-than-life creature features that debuted in the ’90s, Anaconda (1997) brought together a crew of 90’s superstars like Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, and Owen Wilson and pitted them in the Amazon against a “legendary” serpent. It centered around a documentary crew led by a snake hunter who takes them off their trail of native tribes. The group is looking for a massive green anaconda now, and by the looks of it, the natives already know it, and this hunter knows his odds are dubious.

Only ten years after Anaconda, a take on snakes took us airborne, where we have had enough of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane. A hilarious out-of-sorts horror action comedy led by Samuel L. Jackson and featuring horror royalty, including the likes of Lin Shaye, Snakes on a Plane (2006) took off with a hit song and a surprisingly successful story of how much worse air travel could really be.

Mixed reviews and a box office disappointment could lead you away, but the frenzy online kept this film alive and provided endless color and quote-worthy commentary.

11. Spiders (Eight Legged Freaks, Arachnophobia)

I don’t know anyone who likes spiders, and the hate started early in the 1990s with Arachnophobia (1990). With an incredible leading duo of Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, the film covered a small town in California that has become the epicenter for an aggressive, invasive spider species. Named for the clinical fear of spiders, the film was a surprise hit with positive reviews and a box office profit in the black.

Later, in 2002, spiders would get bigger and better treatment with Eight Legged Freaks (previously titled Arach Attack). Starring David Arquette, Scott Terra, Doug E. Doug, and Scarlett Johansson, it follows the troubles of a small mining town in Arizona that is overrun by giant, mutated spiders that have been exposed to toxic waste, causing them to grow exponentially.

Although the premise was amusing and sometimes entertaining, it was ill-received and was, at best, praised as an homage to the B-movie that ran out of ideas.

12. Wolves (Frozen, The Grey)

The pack, growling and circling, we imagine wolves as group hunters ripe on the trail and vicious as anything we’ve ever encountered. The werewolf pervades horror often and is based on the ferocious manners of the wild wolf found in treacherous regions across the map, melding man and beast, but here we face the real thing.

Frozen (2010) wasn’t much of a film when it arrived and didn’t make the biggest splash as it detailed three friends stuck on a ski lift battling the cold and trying to avoid the wolves below. It has one of the most horrifying scenes where only the audio of what is happening is available, leaving it to your imagination how these wolves might pull some helpless person to shreds.

In another survival story, The Grey (2011), we have a more capable crew willing to fight back against the forces of nature, with Liam Neeson guiding a group of plane crash survivors through the perilous snow and against a pack of wolves fighting for their territory. A grittier, more thorough, and more intense watch than Frozen, Neeson is a force against frozen nature and a worthy adversary of the original hunters of the frigid outback.