Are you watching a horror movie right now?
Is there a dog in it?
Congratulations! That dog is going to get horribly murdered!
You can apply this to thrillers too. Heck, not even R-rated movies. A PG-13 thriller by M Knight or Spielberg? They totally have no problems brutalizing Man’s Best Friend to a crowd of moviegoers.
It used to be a joke that the minority character is the one who gets axed. Scream 2 opened up with characters literally commenting about this. But now dogs have taken over the cliche victim role with astonishing certainty. It would be easier to list the movies where this doesn’t happen, and I don’t think I could come up with more than two.
It’s bad enough to see this keep happening as an avid dog lover, but it’s especially repulsive when they use this excuse to show an incredibly gruesome death because, like, it’s an animal so it’s okay, right? The dog’s death in V/H/S 2, for example, left me visibly upset for almost a day and a half because of how gratuitous it was, the camera zooming in on the poor creature as it cried out during its final agonizing moments.
And I recently experienced this again with The Wailing, a Korean horror movie on Netflix that was recommended by this very board. The movie is totally fine except for the part where
I’m seriously tired of it. It’s such an eye-rolling cliche at this point, it’s probably the most cliched trope in the history of cinema even. When are filmmakers going to ease up? It’s pretty much 1000% guaranteed that fido is going to have a rough time.
Is there a dog in it?
Congratulations! That dog is going to get horribly murdered!
You can apply this to thrillers too. Heck, not even R-rated movies. A PG-13 thriller by M Knight or Spielberg? They totally have no problems brutalizing Man’s Best Friend to a crowd of moviegoers.
It used to be a joke that the minority character is the one who gets axed. Scream 2 opened up with characters literally commenting about this. But now dogs have taken over the cliche victim role with astonishing certainty. It would be easier to list the movies where this doesn’t happen, and I don’t think I could come up with more than two.
It’s bad enough to see this keep happening as an avid dog lover, but it’s especially repulsive when they use this excuse to show an incredibly gruesome death because, like, it’s an animal so it’s okay, right? The dog’s death in V/H/S 2, for example, left me visibly upset for almost a day and a half because of how gratuitous it was, the camera zooming in on the poor creature as it cried out during its final agonizing moments.
And I recently experienced this again with The Wailing, a Korean horror movie on Netflix that was recommended by this very board. The movie is totally fine except for the part where
a flock of birds start eating away at a dying dog’s flesh. As in, it’s still alive and crying while the crows peck away at it
I’m seriously tired of it. It’s such an eye-rolling cliche at this point, it’s probably the most cliched trope in the history of cinema even. When are filmmakers going to ease up? It’s pretty much 1000% guaranteed that fido is going to have a rough time.
