There are few things in cinema that can conjure up emotion more efficiently than the death of a dog. There's something undeniably saddening about watching a loyal, caring and ultimately innocent creature die on-screen, and it's considerably worse when it's an animal that is so synonymous with companionship. To make matters worse, Hollywood routinely provides us with unfalteringly saccharine portrayals of these animals, so that what we see on screen is often so imbued with pre-fabricated charm and adoration that it becomes impossible to ignore their presence. Whether we know they're coming or not, doggie deaths never fail to tug at the heartstrings. They provide us with cinematic moments that are as enduring as they are provocative, hauling us out of sheer cinematic contentment and sobering us up with an elusive mix of deeply felt guilt and abject sorrow. Of course, simply cramming a dog into a film for the sake of killing the poor mutt off isn't enough to plunge audiences into a pit of grief and despair; these canine companions always serve a purpose beyond providing directors with emotional fodder. Dogs come to symbolise the core themes of the films they appear in, they provide characters with essential personality traits and reflect ideas brought up by the plot. In this respect, the death of a dog comes to represent the loss of something in any given film, and it's because of this that dog deaths in cinema are always so arresting. Please note: there are spoilers ahead.
