Clichés and Dead Kids: What The Cabin in the Woods Says About Horror

There is something that I have noticed about people who love horror movies: a character can be chopped, drawn-and-quartered, decapitated, impaled, or tickled with a chainsaw, but when it comes to animals, especially a dog undergoing the same torture, some viewers say “nope.”

Now that this year’s Good Boy is hitting Shudder today, some might still be on the fence about seeing it because it’s main star, a dog named Indy, is put in peril. Not a spoiler, but those who are hesitant to watch it, go ahead. It might be scary on a supernatural level, but our furry friend is the hero.

[Spoiler alert: there are pictures contained in this text in which the dogs in the films do die.]

There are some animals that are more acceptable than others to see torn apart or smashed; aquatic creatures are at the top of the list.

Look at the king of all shark movies: Jaws. In that classic film, a summer smorgasbord of beachgoers resulted in the razor-toothed fish getting hit with the bad end of a rifle/oxygen tank combo. Audiences cheered.

But ask how they felt about the stick-retrieving dog in the film who never returned from the surf and you might get a different response.

After the commercial success of Jaws, countless non-human celluloid monsters were disposed of in knock-off movies and cheap imitations.

Movies featuring orcas, grizzlies, alligators, and even frogs being shot at, burned, blown up, and disposed of. Nobody seemed to care, just as long as it wasn’t a cat or yikes, a dog.

In 1983, Stephen King’s bestseller Cujo hit theaters. In the novel and the film, Cujo is a jumbo-sized Saint Bernard whose curiosity got the better of him, leaving him riddled with rabies.

The once gentle-natured beast goes on a rampage trapping a mother and her young son in a Ford Pinto in the driveway. His demise isn’t pleasant, but people seem more sympathetic to his undoing than they are about the insatiable great white shark stalking New York.

This is probably because a dog is considered man’s best friend, and King knowing that played with the reader’s emotions and fears about the creatures we trust going rogue, literally biting the hand that feeds them.

King played with this scenario again. This time with cats in 1992’s Sleepwalkers. Whereas Cujo’s death was an empathetic demise – I’m sure many thought he was put out of his crazed misery – Sleepwalkers was more aggressive in its treatment of cats. They got twisted, kicked, shot at, and ensnared in bear traps.

Although not as popular as its canine counterpart, Sleepwalkers could be excused maybe because the cats being killed looked more like FurReal friends than FurReal enemies; you could almost see the stuffing coming through the stitches on the props as actors used methodology in responding to claws-out face hugs.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has a long history of being cruel to real animals. And this may be the reason why people are so squeamish and untrustworthy about seeing them “harmed” on screen.

Way, way back in 1903, Topsy the Circus elephant was deemed too volatile to continue working in the big top and was scheduled to be euthanized. Thomas Edison had a much brighter idea; why not electrocute her – he claimed it was more humane – on film?

Called “Electrocuting An Elephant” the film became a bigger draw than the real elephants under the tent.

Through the years filmmakers weren’t under any scrutiny from animal rights activists, but during one scene in 1939’s Jesse James, a horse was blindfolded and driven off a cliff; not soon after the “No animals were harmed” disclaimer was born.

This reassuring phrase was further questioned after a slew of films through later decades were accused of harming mother nature’s trusting offspring.

1980 mock-doc Cannibal Holocaust was one such example. The movie documented real-life executions of among other things a squirrel monkey, a pig and a turtle. The director Ruggero Deodato admitted to the killings and has since said he regrets doing it.

To be fair, Deodato’s film also came under litigation when audiences thought the human actors had also been killed, which resulted in a court case and “Holocaust” banished across the globe. The director was able to prove his cast was still very much alive, but the controversy still remained.

Certainly, in modern times these fears are no longer a matter of concern. But that’s not true. In 2017, TMZ released a video of one of the dogs in the family-friendly movie A Dog’s Purpose being forced into the water, and then pulled beneath the wave machine.

Producers investigated the footage, even relieving the safety representative on the film. They conducted a third-party investigation into the situation.

More recently PETA boycotted the movie Nosferatu over their use of rats. For some reason, the public wasn’t as concerned.

However, this still doesn’t answer the question as to why horror moviegoers will avoid a film if an animal dies.

I have heard plenty of times and from many people, “If the dog dies, I don’t want to see it.”

Several modern supernatural films have taken to killing dogs, oftentimes in the first reel. A family moves into a rural house and the dog runs outside never to return.

Said family goes on the hunt for Rover only to find him or her torn apart, like a pair of bloody Christmas slippers, within a few feet from the front porch.

“Awww” cries the audience, but that same family could endure the worst supernatural abuse inside their own home and never elicit the same collective response.

Remember Harry in the original The Amityville Horror (1979)? Dad actually stopped the car and ran back to save the poor fellow. Unfortunately in the 2005 remake, the family dog isn’t so lucky.

Although this phenomenon seems to infiltrate all movie types, one might more likely forgive a film wherein the animal becomes deceased in an emotional way; the death is actually a lesson to the main character about love, devotion and friendship, even revenge. Take John Wick for example, that whole movie is about canine death vigilantism. I wonder if people fast forward through the first ten minutes when re-watching it?

But place that same animal in a horror movie and rip him apart and audiences are more than likely to be instantly put off.

There’s even a whole website devoted to doggie-death movie spoilers called “Does the Dog Die.”

These canine deaths could be set in our subconscious attachments. Not only do these creatures protect us and trust us, they also become our spiritual guides, thwarting the unseen from taking aim at our souls.

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that dogs have a sixth sense, able to see things that humans cannot. They not only protect us from worldly home invaders they also secure the ethereal penumbra.

Pet psychologist Marti Miller understands that we can’t prove dogs can see spirits, but, “If you observe a dog standing in the corner, barking at nothing visible, then there’s a pretty good chance that he’s barking at an entity, spirit, or energy that doesn’t belong there.”

Of course, there is also the simplest of answers: most humans are equipped with a bleeding heart.

We take offense when innocence is snuffed out violently. We have learned to bond with animals and as a part of that trade-off, we must never turn on them without good reason.

As humans, we are empathetic and can place ourselves in the animal’s situation. In contrast, we also have questionable judgments about equality.

That means we can forgive seeing a human in a horror movie be decapitated, because well they are cognitive with critical thinking skills, able to remove themselves from the danger had they just moved out right after they heard the first disembodied footsteps coming from upstairs.

Dogs and cats on the other hand are seemingly less likely to abandon their families going so far as to give their own lives to protect them. Stupid people.

A study at Georgia Regents University showed that humans participating in a hypothetical situation wherein they could save either a human or a dog from being hit by a speeding bus, 40 percent would save the dog.

Further, women were twice as likely to save the dog than men. Personally, I can confirm that most of the females I know won’t watch a horror movie or any movie where a dog gets killed.

Robert Sapolsky, a professor and author said of the findings:

We can extend empathy to another organism and feel its pain like no other species. But let’s not be too proud of ourselves. As this study and too much of our history show, we’re pretty selective about how we extend our humaneness to other human beings.

I think, without knowing it, the professor may have also explained the tendency for people to avoid a film where a dog gets killed.

In the Spielberg film, Jaws there was this big bully swimming around Amity Island eating everything on two (and four) legs.

Yet, Sadie, the family dog in The Conjuring was the only smart one in the movie and refused to enter the house. She was repaid for her trepidation by getting eviscerated in the family’s front yard.

It also seems to be more disheartening the longer the dog stays in the picture. If the dog dies halfway through the film the audience has invested much more time in falling in love with it onscreen.

A few years back, I tried to tell a friend to watch the emotionally charged horror movie The Monster, and immediately they wanted to know why I called it “emotional.”

“If kids or dogs die, I’m out immediately,” they said.

In 2016’s breakout horror movie Don’t Breathe had a very taut scene with a vicious Rottweiler. Can’t tell you how that ends, but let’s just say my friend will be partially disappointed.

Folks, it’s make-believe. Films are meant to pull at your emotions if done correctly, and whether a dog or cat dies is irrelevant to a well-told story.

Just so you know (mass spoiler alert) the dog almost always dies. And if he doesn’t, it probably wasn’t a good movie anyway.

This article is from the iHorror archives and has been updated

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