The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This refers to films dealing with animals turning on and attacking humanity. This can either occur in terms of individual animal attacks – as in Jaws (1975) – or in terms of a massed attack by an entire species of animal as in The Birds (1963. These works frequently come with an environmentalist theme where animals are seen as being mutated or driven to attack by pollution or in revenge for despoliation of the environment.
For films about animals and insects enlarged to giant size see Giant Animals. For films dealing with the insect kingdom turning against humanity see Bugs. Specific species where depictions are numerous have been spilled over their own themes with Apes and Killer Sharks. For all general rampaging monstrosities see Monster Movies.
For a more detailed overview of the topic read the theme essay Animals Attack Films
Modest and effective horror anthology from the two brothers responsible for Pitch Black and the Ewoks tv movies. Featuring a quarter of stories, all of them are strong efforts generating a more than reasonable degree of tension throughout
Amid the spate of post-Jaws Animals Amok films, this, which comes armed with a John Sayles script and plays on the urban legend of baby alligators flushed into the sewers, was a rather enjoyable effort that plants tongue in cheek
The 1980 Alligator was amusing but this hardly one of the sequels the world was burning to see. An utterly formulaic copy that is killed by impoverished giant alligator effects
A film crew in the Amazon headed by Jennifer Lopez encounter a giant snake. Mounted as a CGI monster movie in the aftermath of Jurassic Park, this has scripting that frequently descends into the ludicrous
Anaconda was a CGI monster movie that has subsequently gained a bad movie reputation. The idea of a comedy remake about conducting a remake of the film just seems a little too cutely meta
A sequel to the Jennifer Lopez-starring Anaconda that manages to be even more ridiculous and cliche ridden than its predecessor to the point you frequently laugh it off the screen
The Asylum produces a sequel to Zoombies. While the original featured zombified zoo animals, this time we get an aquarium where the staff find themselves fighting off of zombified marine life
Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, a popular revival of the 1970s bugs amok genre about a town overrun by deadly spiders, although this avoids the horror label and plays itself with much humour
Yes, a film about an invasion by space chickens, which are represented by hand puppets. Words fail me on this one. This is painful to watch. My Worst Film of 2023.
A deliberately ridiculous Charles Band production where students throwing their laptops into a lake causes an alligator to float through the air and become giant-sized
The people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey offer up a savage take on another childhood favourite with a horror version of Bambi where Bambi becomes a mutated deer with a murderous hatred of humans
There has yet to be a decent killer bat movie. This redresses the balance somewhat by offering up CGI bat effects but otherwise falls prey to a cliche-ridden script
A survival horror film where Idris Elba is on a trip to Africa only to be hunted by a rogue lion. Decently produced, this never works as well as you expect it would have
Modest and occasionally atmospheric 1950s B-budget alien invasion film where the title is explained as the alien’s ability to control animals, making this arguably the first Animals Amok film
This was made as a quickie cash-in on Irwin Allen’s big-budgeted bomb The Swarm. Cheap effects and ridiculous plotting cause it to topple well over into bad movie stakes
Sequel to the hit killer rat film Willard, which brings back the scene-stealing bad rat but kills the film off by pairing him with a nauseatingly cute kid
Birdemic was a cult bad movie – incredibly, despite the better budget that must have come his way, James Nguyen has gone and made the same thing filled with laughably flat dialogue and the worst effects ever seen on screen
At one point, Birdemic had a bad movie cult that rivalled The Room. Whether we asked for it or not, this is a third film in the series. James Nguyen seems to think everybody has come for a lecture about Global Warming.
The new contender for the Worst Film Ever Made, this fully lives up to its reputation, full of astounding technical ineptitudes, bad acting and hilarious one-liners. A blatant ripoff of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film inspired a series of Nature’s Revenge films throughout the 1970s. Expectedly, Hitchcock creates masterful set-pieces but the most effective thing the film does is to remove explanations creating a work of anxious uncertainty
Film from cult Italian director Lucio Fulci. This has almost nothing to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story. With Fulci’s trademark gore sequences tamed, there is not much else for the film to fall back on
An enthusiastically gore-drenched New Zealand comedy about mutant sheep, this favourably harkens back to the heyday of Peter Jackson’s early splatter films
Although overshadowed by the same year’s Rogue, this is another Australian killer crocodile film that racks up a remarkable degree of raw, seat-gouging tension in managing to confine its cast of three to a tree for the duration
The Australian-made Black Water was a gripping thriller about three people in a tree being menaced by a crocodile in the water below. This is a sequel with a further group trapped in a cave and menaced by a killer crocodile
From The Asylum, the same company behind Sharknado. The major surprise is that this is a monster movie that doesn’t place tongue-in-cheek and aim as absurdly as possible. Average in all regards
Produced by Wes Craven and directed by his assistant director, this features a group of twentysomethings led by Michelle Rodriguez trapped on an island with a horde of killer dogs
A surprisingly good film about social media influencers trapped on an island of rabid killer dogs. This plants tongue considerably in cheek and welcomely treats its influencers with some sarcastic amusement
From regular genre director Christophe Gans, this is a head-scratching mix of French historical drama, monster movie and imported Wu Xia action moves
A film with a great set-up where three criminals on the run (which include Adrien Brody and John Malkovich) take refuge in a warehouse only to find they are trapped with a maddened killer dog
Film about a girl and her autistic brother trapped inside a house with a tiger, this proves an unexpectedly really good. It avoids the cliches of the Animals Amok genre and derives superb hair-raising tension from the set-up
We’ve had Sharknado. Now comes Catnado, an anthology about storms of cats. This contains episodes so pitiful and ineptly made that this enters into the unwatchable
Largely remembered now for its premise – survivors in a nuclear fallout shelter find they have been trapped with a horde of vampire bats. Sort of a conceptual collision between The Birds and The Andromeda Strain
This was made as a fairly blatant mockbuster copy of Jaws. This is basically Jaws on dry land with a bear instead of a shark and an assonant soundalike title Claws instead of Jaws
Very loosely based on a real-life incident, this is an Animals Attack film about a rampaging bear wired on cocaine. Director Elizabeth Banks makes a play for darkly funny humour
Another of the films inspired by Cocaine Bear, this features an invasion by alien crabs that become wired on cocaine. It is hard to tell if this is being deliberately ridiculous or not
Key film from cult exploitation director Ted V. Mikels. The film’s premise – “pet food company uses bodies from the graveyard as their cat food, making the cats hungry for human flesh” – seems the essence of the grindhouse film
Colin Minihan has been a director on the rise in recent years. Here he makes an amusing film about Justin Long under siege in his home by killer coyotes that manages a deft blend of fine tension and humour
An amusingly tongue-in-cheek horror comedy that is a throwback to the1950s featuring an attack by giant crabs. With some surprisingly good crab effects too.
This is another of the low-budget films that take their inspiration from Cocaine Bear with a drug-addicted raccoon amok. This sits right between bad movie stakes and passable amusement
Alexandre Aja makes a based on true life film where Kaya Scodeario becomes trapped in the crawlspace under a house with alligators as floodwaters rise all around
Tobe Hooper delivers an entry amid the early-00s vogue for B-budget CGI monster movies, drawing clear inspiration from Lake Placid. Hooper had not made a good film since the 1980s and this does little to reverse the path of mediocrity
The late 2000s brought a spate of giant crocodile amok films that included some really good efforts like Rogue and Black Water. This is a belated entry from China, featuring some surprisingly good CGI effects
One of the more underrated Stephen King adaptations about a rabid killer dog. Director Lewis Teague turns the last 40 minutes with Dee Wallace and son trapped in a car by the dog into an extended climax of grueling tension
Undeniably influenced by Jaws, this Australian effort is the first ever killer crocodile film. Nothing extraordinary, although the film does have an interesting subtext about the conflict between European and Aborigine cultures
A cheap 1970s Nature’s Revenge film that blatantly borrows all the essentials of The Birds in the story of a group of trampers in the High Sierras coming under attack by wildlife due to an ozone hole.
James Herbert was a writer of extraordinary ferocity and gore-drenched extremes. This is an adaptation of his first book The Rats where all the ferocity has been watered down to a standard Animals Amok film
Another in the 1970s fad for Animals Attack films. This features David McCallum facing off against hordes of dogs that turn on humanity with killing intent
Copy of Willard with Les Tremayne as a man obsessed with snakes who starts using them to take revenge on those who have wronged him. This gets fascinatingly torrid.
This is a B-budget film about genetically engineered killer bats where the usual is boosted by a sense of humour and a line-up of eccentric characters
This is essentially Assault on Precinct 13, which had police and criminals at siege inside a jail, but where the attacking street gangs are replaced by alligators. Far better than the B movie you assume
The Bird Flu Epidemic was a brief panic over an influenza outbreak that infected humans; this seems to little concern the film that blows it up into a horde of large mutant birds that attack humans
Mad scientist cheapie from poverty row studio PRC in which George Zucco has found an Aztec Quetzalcoatl bird and kills his enemies by placing one of its feathers on their person
The killer crocodile/alligator film has not had a great track record (with only a couple of exceptions). This is not one of those exceptions and quickly sinks into risibility
Classic film from the 1970s Nature’s Revenge fad with a group gathered for a party on an island finding that flora and fauna all around has become malevolent and turned against humanity
Excruciating CGI cute animals film where animals gang up to stop Brendan Fraser redeveloping their forest. Essentially a 1970s Nature’s Revenge film by way of the slapstick family-friendly violence of Home Alone
A belated Italian-made attempt to jump aboard the bandwagon and copy Jaws with a giant alligator hunting people on an island
A surprise hit when it came out, this is a blatant copy of Jaws, substituting a killer grizzly bear on the rampage in a national park for a shark. Not a very well made film.
There feels like there should be something tongue-in-cheek about the idea of a killer crocodile film set in the British lakelands. Surprisingly, this plays itself seriously
A solid and well-made film that creates quite a reasonable tension as a family that live in the woods deal with a lurking wolf. What is going on sits in an interesting state of ambiguity.
Film about giant crabs amok that feels like a throwback to a certain kind of 1950s monster movie. This plays itself remarkably seriously for the most part only to fall apart right at the end
The killer shark film that became the No 1 box-office hit of all time and put Steven Spielberg’s name on the map. A powerhouse of seat-edge tension, filled with great performances and the young Spielberg with an incredible grasp of his craft
This seems to have been slung together as a mash-up of Jaws and the 1970s fad for occult films. Ridiculous and badly made on all levels, no more so than the climax with a giant snake conducting a devil worship ceremony
A blatant ripoff of Carrie about a tormented girl who takes psychic revenge using snakes. Without Brian De Palma in the director’s chair, this only looks like a cheap tv movie
A halfway reasonable Syfy Channel film with people under attack by treacheries of ravens. This homages The Birds, including featuring an aging Rod Taylor, to modest effect
TV movie that does nothing to dispel the dictum that there has never been any such thing as a good killer bee film. As always, the effects let the show down and the rest of the piece is slow going and talky
A sequel to Killer Crocodile, which was a dreary Italian-made Jaws ripoff. Here another radioactive waste mutated crocodile stalks people. Indifferently made.
An Italian exploitation ripoff of Jaws with a group of environmentalists in South America dealing with a killer crocodile that has been made giant size by radioactive waste
A very routine B-budget film in which Erik Estrada and Pat Morita face a giant animatronic snake. This was billed as Anaconda 2 in some places.
A CGI monster movie directed by a former Industrial Light and Magic visual effects supervisor that features a family under attacks by over-sized komodo lizards
Herman Cohen production with Michael Gough as a mad scientist who creates a giant ape. Aside from Gough’s entertainingly mad performance, this is killed by incredibly tatty effects
David E. Kelley, better known as a high-profile tv producer, turns his hand to writing a killer crocodile film, although the result never ends up satisfying either as a monster movie or the jokey tone Kelley wants to take
Australian director Richard Franklin makes a film with Elisabeth Shue trapped in a house with a hyper-intelligent killer chimpanzee. The film has structural problems but Franklin does generates fine tension
A formula Syfy Channel film variant on the bugs gone amok film, starring Lucy Lawless as a government official who fights to stop a genetically-engineered swarm of locusts miles wide
A Chinese-made attempt to make a disaster movie with a crosscut of characters aboard a luxury airliner. What causes the film to plummet down into the ridiculous is the addition of a horde of mutant cats
Film about a dog that has been experimentally crossbred with DNA from other animals that proceeds to go amok. The film proceeds to collapse into the completely ridiculous
A routine made-for-tv movie where a small Alaskan town comes under attack as it is overrun by a legion of marabunta ants
Cocaine Bear proved a reasonable success. The Asylum’s response was to give us Methgator about a drug-addicted giant alligator
Incredibly shabby film about residents of a Texas boarding house being killed by a supernatural dog
Disappointing George Romero film about a paraplegic man’s psychic link with his monkey that then comes to enact his suppressed anger. A fine idea drowns in shrill moral characterisations.
This tries to go one up on Sharknado and offers a tornado made up of assorted animals and prehistoric life. A completely ridiculous film from prolific British producer Scott Jeffrey
The directorial debut of Gore Verbinski, this harnesses Babe-styled animatronics to essentially create a live-action Tom and Jerry cartoon with two comic villains being outwitted by a seemingly unkillable mouse
Vivid, well written production from George Pal with Charlton Heston as the owner of a South American plantation who faces an unstoppable horde of marabunta ants that are devouring everything in their path
Gimmicky B-budget film about a hi-tech future prison built at the South Pole. Thus has been thrown together with a giant snake amok plot. A passably routine effort
A film with a premise – giant killer rabbits – that is sunken entirely the failure to make a series of photographically enlarged rabbits look threatening
Adaptation of a Martin Cruz Smith novel about an Indian reservation under attack by hordes of vampire bats. The Nature Amok theme suffers terrible effects and plays subordinate to a polemic about the state of the modern Indian
Jordan Peele seems to have arrived at the same position that M. Night Shyamalan was in in the early 2000s. In his third film as director, he makes a film about UFOs that becomes a baffling scratch of the head
Underrated film with Peter Weller as a Wall Street banker who has his life overturned in trying to deal with a tenacious, seemingly hyper-intelligent rat that invades his home
After his crass remake of King Kong, Dino de Laurentiis went on to make this blatant copy of Jaws, which was widely ridiculed. Contrarily, i rather liked it – a Moby Dick by way of Jaws, it comes with some visually fantastic moments
Solid and effective entry in the 1970s Animals Attack genre with a group on an island under attack by killer dogs
Rather effective Australian killer dog film. The film streamlines anything extraneous in the plot and gets down to the business at hand of a family living in the Outback being terrorised by a pack of wild dogs, at which you have to admit it generates a reasonable hand of tension
One of the most conceptually confusing films I have seen in some time – it starts out seeming like a film about people hunting a near-mythical giant pig before abruptly veering off into Backwoods Brutality territory and then out of the blue introducing a sinister cult to the mix
The second film from Joe Dante. Mounted as a quickie copy of Jaws by producer Roger Corman, Dante succeeds in peppering it with a lot of sly jokes and genre in-references
The 1978 Piranha is remade as a cable tv movie but has excised all the humour and witty genre in-referencing of the original
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
The film that James Cameron would prefer we forget about. A nominal sequel to Joe Dante’s enjoyable tongue-in-cheek Piranha, this misses that film’s sense of humour and lets the show sink amid absurd effects
Sequel to the Piranha remake. Much the same as before but up one cup size. Well not really, the sequel is more like a joke that was funny the first time that becomes belaboured in the retelling
Grippingly intense thriller with a couple trapped in an empty swimming pool along with a hungry crocodile
Johannes Roberts is a director that has been producing some solid work since the 2000s. Here he makes a film about a rabid killer chimpanzee that ratchets up some great tension
One of several killer crocodile films that came out in 2007. This has some big-budget CGI effects but is cliched and was overshadowed by far better entries from the same year with Rogue and Black Water
The once celebrated John Frankenheimer flopped with this monster movie about a mutant bear with laughable effects and inflated pretensions to message making