10 WTF Animal Horror Movies You Won't Believe Exist

There are some genuinely scary animal horror movies out there and the one thing that unites them all is a believable villain. Sharks are an obvious choice (thanks, Jaws), as are crocodiles – both beasts that have been known to be partial to a bit of human flesh every now and then.

Spiders and snakes, who might not be able to devour you whole but can exterminate you with a swift venomous bite, work too. But some horrors feature animal antagonists so ludicrous they beggar belief.

Maybe in trying to bring something other than yet another shark attack movie to genre, the makers of these films had to dredge the very depths of their creativity (and the food chain) to come up with something fresh and new.

Unfortunately, this resulted in a wave of films with the most unlikely animal threats cinema has ever seen with species that would be hard-pushed to even slightly mentally traumatise a human, let alone kill them.

Just a word of advice before we proceed for any budding animal horror directors out there: if your beastly villain inspires ‘awwwws’ instead of ‘arrrrrghs’ it might be better just to make another shark movie.

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 horror The Birds taught us that our feathered friends can actually be pretty damn terrifying when they turn against you and anyone who’s attempted to eat fish and chips al fresco in a seaside town can tell you an irate and hungry seagull can often be more terrifying than a rabid dog.

But the birds of Birdemic: Shock and Terror (two emotions you won’t be left feeling after seeing the movie) aren’t using their beaks and claws to attack humans, but acidic spittle and the ability to dive-bomb and explode on impact – defences they’ve developed in response to global warming or something equally inconceivable.

It’s inspired by Hitchcock’s masterpiece, believe it or not, but even though there’s half a decade separating the two movies and leaps and bounds in terms of visual effects, it’s The Birds that emerges the more technically realistic whereas Birdemic’s avian villains look like they’re superimposed during post-production using Microsoft Paint.