Animal Attack Movies and How Two-Headed Shark Attack (2012) is a Perfect Model

Horror is a genre of movies, books, and television that can be split into many different subcategories.  These can range from psychological to natural disaster to slasher movies, as well as other subsections.  Within each of these subsections are different, smaller factions of films.  For example, within the slasher genre there are the typical serial killer slasher movies (Halloween, Friday the 13^th), as well as the supernatural being slashers (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser), the friendly looking but ultimately deadly slashers (Child’s Play, Leprechaun), and the animal slashers (Jaws, Anaconda).  Some of these might be written off as different subsections of horror that aren’t slasher flicks, but the four sub-subsections tend to usually have one thing in common.  Usually, the villain is killing off the characters one by one until only a select minority of the characters remain.

The most interesting of the four types of slashers that were listed are the animal slashers.  These may not usually be categorized as slashers due to the fact that the animals do not necessarily slash their victims, but eat them instead.  For the most part that is true.  However, the stories tend to unfold in a similar manner.  There are a bunch of characters that are put into a bad position with a killer.  In this case, the killer is some sort of animal.  The characters usually (there are exceptions, such as Jaws) do not have depth, outside of some shallow depth to the main character or two.  The movies are based more on showing interesting death sequences than creating emotion with the characters.  These are similar to many of the standard slasher movies that are normally seen.

An animal slasher style movie about a sabre-toothed tiger.

Even more specific would be aquatic animal slasher movies.  The classification basically says what it is.  These are the animal slasher movies that involve aquatic creatures such as sharks, seals, and whales.  They also require the protagonists of the movie to be in some sort of aquatic environment.  Some environments might include beaches, boats, pools, or other such things.  All of the aquatic animal slasher movies require a way for the characters to remain in danger, rather than leaving the water to safely escape.  Sometimes this is attributed to the stupidity of people.  Other times, there are certain unstoppable forces that cause the predicament.

A movie that fully exemplifies what is being described is the movie Two-Headed Shark Attack.  This was a movie released by the production company The Asylum in 2012.  The movie is basically a blueprint of the exact kind of aquatic animal slasher movie that is being described.  Running through each piece of the checklist will help to verify the claim.  What are the environments of the movie?  The environments are a boat, an atoll, and the water between the boat and the atoll.  The atoll has beaches.  What is the problem?  A two headed shark.  Not only is this an animal, but it is mutated.  How deep are the characters?  One is an asshole, one is smart, and the main character knows how to weld and is afraid of the water.  Don’t worry, she overcomes the fear.  How are they kept in danger?  The boat is damaged, and the atoll is collapsing.  Water will be all around the characters soon.  What happens to the characters?  They begin to die off one by one, due to the attacking shark.

Not a deep character.  Only there because she's Carmen Electra.

Two-Headed Shark Attack does not add anything new to the sub-sub-subgenre, but instead, perfectly encapsulates everything that this sub-sub-subgenre is.  The characters remain in danger throughout.  The animal is extremely dangerous.  The cast grows smaller as time goes on.  It’s a classic animal slasher movie, with the mutation twist.  That does not make Two-Headed Shark Attack a good movie.  It brings nothing new to the genre, and rather just goes over already sailed waters.  It is still a fun watch, for what it is.  That is neither here nor there.

The animal slasher movie sub-subgenre is one that is interesting to look at.  Sometime in the future, a look will be given to the other sections of the slasher movie genre.  Until then, at least you know about the animal subsection of the subgenre.  Have fun with those movies.

So scary.

There is one note that I would like to make:

• If you would like to suggest a movie for the Sunday "Bad" Movie tell me on Twitter or leave a comment below.