Evil Detecting Dog / Film

• The cat who's taken up residence in Marnie's house in 100 Feet frequently detects Mike's presence before he becomes visible.
• Simultaneously referenced and used straight in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. When Ace is making the acquaintance of Roger's dog on the crime scene, the dog barks at Lois Einhorn when she walks in:
  Ace: So, animals can sense evil.
  • He later learns that Lois is the killer — and, as it turns out, a man. And if the dog witnessed the murder, his reaction to Lois, someone who harmed his master, is perfectly natural.
• Alien:
  • In Alien (1979), the cat is able to detect the titular creature, though no one apart from Ripley seems to be aware of this.
    • Brett does notice that the cat is hissing at something, but by the time he turns around to see what's bothering Jones, it's really too late.
  • In Aliens, during the opening dream sequence, Ripley's cat senses the Chest Burster inside her and starts to hiss.
  • In Alien³, a dog barks incessantly at a crawling facehugger, which then infects the dog.
  • Alien 40th Anniversary Shorts. In "Specimen", a Doberman Pinscher trained to detect contaminated samples detects the facehugger and barks away accordingly, but the humans decide to deal with it in the morning. Fortunately the Doberman is revealed to be a synthetic animal who can hold its own against the alien.
• Shortly after he has been attacked by a werewolf in An American Werewolf in London, all sorts of animals start hissing and growling at David. The only exception is wolves. They don't seem to mind him too much.
• In Annie, Sandy reacts to Annie's hired "real parents" with aggression and fear.
• In Aquaman, Tom and Atlanna's dog starts barking just before the Atlanteans invade their home in the prologue.
• In Arachnophobia, both a cat and a dog can sense that the General is, if not technically evil, than certainly not to be messed with. A crow does not realize this in time.
• Bad Moon arguably revolves around the trope, being from the point of view of the dog as he realizes the uncle is a werewolf and attempts to defend the family from him. Unfortunately, he's not able to warn the family and him attacking the werewolf while in human form gets him taken away for supposed aggressive behavior, but the boy frees him in time to race home and kill the werewolf himself.
• Bird Box: Birds can sense when the creatures are around and chirp wildly when they're near. Malorie figures this out when her group have to raid a supermarket and she comes across a trio of parakeets that were left behind. She hangs on to them for the remainder of the movie. Unfortunately they don't react to a person with evil intent; which is a problem as there are insane people who are apparently working in league with the creatures.
• In Blackenstein, a dog whines and barks at the approach of the monstrous Eddie. Eddie kills the dog, and the householders go to investigate why the dog has gone silent. Bad move.
• In The Black Room, Anton's dog can tell that his master has been replaced, and constantly tries to kill the impostor.
• In Cello, the family's pet dog, Sunny, barks loudly when it is near the titular musical instrument.
• In Cloverfield, when the trio head into the subway system to hide, they find dozens of rats scurrying away from the rear end of a darkened tunnel. One of the characters, Marlene, realizes they have to get away from the area the rats were running away from. Minutes later a giant parasite attacks the group and injures Marlene, who dies a nasty death from the infected bite.
• The Perron's dog Sadie in The Conjuring refuses to enter the house, sensing the evil force within. Unfortunately, this doesn't save her.
• Daredevil (2003): From the Director's Cut is a scene at an airport where Bullseye is going through security. He briefly glares at one of the security dogs, which whimpers in fear.
• Dogs bark, horses rear, and cats snarl at the mysterious woman in Cult Of The Cobra, because they can tell she's a venomous snake in human form.
• In Dark August, Sal's dog Mona barks and growls whenever the hooded figure that's been haunting Sal appears. At the end of the movie, Sal and Mona are tracking the figure in the forest when Mona suddenly attacks Sal, forcing him to shoot her.
• The dog at the end of Dead Birds sees William as the skinless, eyeless abomination that attacked the group at the beginning, and starts to bark and then chase him.
• Van Helsing in Dracula (1979) confirms his suspicions about his late daughter's vampirism by investigating her resting place with a horse. When the horse comes by her grave, it starts stomping the ground with its hoof, and then runs away in terror. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward then start digging.
• In Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, a dog begins barking at Ted Bundy with no provocation, obviously able to detect he's a monster long before most of the people who know him can. This is based on the account of true crime author Ann Rule, who knew Bundy in real life before he was first suspected of being a serial killer. In The Stranger Beside Me, she states that everyone found Bundy pleasant to be around save her dog, who loathed him.
• In Fair Game, Jessica's dog Kyla snarls anytime the hunters are in the vicinity or approaching, even if they cannot be seen or heard at the time.
• The Field Guide to Evil: In "A Nocturnal Breath", Xaver's dog Wachter is able to detect the evil drude when it is possessing a mouse. Wachter goes mad, barking wildly, and Xaver has to drag him off before he tries to eat it.
• Played with in The Fly II: Guard dogs are sent after Martinfly, but they fearfully stop in their tracks at the sight of the monster. However, Martinfly retains the mind and morals of Martin Brundle, who likes dogs and knows they don't deserve to be victims of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and thus he literally pets one of them before moving on.
• In Plot A of Frenemies, Murray (Jake's dog) was the first to know about Julianne's true intentions and acts very aggressive towards her (growling at her, making her sit on paint, trying to flush a lover letter she wrote for Jake, etc.). However, Jake remains oblivious to all of this and thinks Murray is just acting up.
• From Beyond the Grave: When Warren arrives home with the invisible elemental on his shoulder in "The Elemental", his dog whines and refuses to come near him. He later runs away. When Madame Orloff arrives to perform the exorcism, one of the first questions she asks is if their dog as run away, and goes on to explain that animals and children can sense elementals, and sometimes even see them.
• Ginger Snaps: Dogs can detect werewolves and lash out at them, not that it saves any of them from chronically becoming werewolf chow (at least four are eaten over the course of the film).
• Good Burger: Dexter and Ed come across a hungry stray dog. Ed gives a hungry dog a Mondo Burger patty, but the dog won't eat it for some reason. So Ed gives the dog a Good Burger patty instead and the dog immediately eats it. This begins to make Dexter and Ed suspicious about Mondo Burger.
• In The Gravedancers, Allison's cat senses that something is seriously wrong with Harris as soon as he returns from the cemetery. It takes one sniff, hisses and flees.
• Lester the family dog barks at Michael Myers hiding behind the bushes in Halloween (1978).
• In The Hand, Jon's cat senses the presence of the Evil Hand in the cabin long before Jon does. It investigates, is attacked and flees; never to be seen again in the film.
• In the film version of Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter breaks into Agent Krendler's house and his dog is initially hostile, but Hannibal actually makes the dog cower in the corner while he pokes around.
• In Hereditary, the family dog has a moment where it enters Peter's room and starts to bark because it can sense the spirit of Charlie.
• In Highway to Hell, Ben barks at any demons and other suspicious characters, including the seemingly-friendly mechanic, Beezle.
• The female character's pet dog in The Hole 2009 runs away when the human characters are investigating the, uh, hole and she states the dog doesn't like it. The dog also freaks out when something tries to drown the little brother.
• In Hook, Nana the dog senses that the titular Captain is about to invade the Darling home and starts barking.
• I Married a Monster from Outer Space. The heroine wonders why her husband (having been possessed by an alien) no longer likes the dog she bought him as a present, and vice versa. He eventually kills it and tells her that it died in an accident. In the climax, some German Shepherds are more effective than bullets in taking on the aliens.
• In The Film of the Book of Interview with the Vampire, Louis is attempting (clumsily) to seduce and then kill an elderly woman. Her pet poodles, however, won't stop barking at him, evidently sensing the ill intentions of the vampire — and the noise drives him to kill them instead.
• In In the Line of Fire, Pam's dog growls aggressively at "James Carney", who is really would-be Presidential assassin Mitch Leary, and who kills Pam and her roommate.
• In Into the Grizzly Maze, the bootleg loggers' dog barks to warn them of the approaching bear but they don't hear him over the noise of their chainsaws.
• In Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Crowley's dog detects the evil early in the movie, but is unwilling to abandon his owner.
• In Jeepers Creepers 2, the farmer's dog is the first one to notice that there's something off with one of the scarecrows...
• Wolf in The Journey of Natty Gann reliably warns Natty of all kinds of impending trouble.
• Owen's Velociraptor pack from Jurassic World really dislike Vic Hoskins, a Blood Knight who wants to use the dinosaurs for modern warfare. One example is shown when they have a snarling fit whenever Hoskins arrives at their holding pens. Delta especially seems to have it out for him, and she is the one to slaughter him near the end of the movie.
• Downplayed in Knives Out. The dogs don't so much detect evil, but they only bark at those they deem strangers. Lampshaded by Blanc, who notes that he's always felt that dogs are excellent judges of character. The barking becomes a Chekhov's Gun in witness stories on the night Harlan died, signifying that there was a stranger on the property. They end up playing the trope straight though as Ransom — the culprit — is the only member out of the Thrombey family and their household staff that dogs bark at, having been estranged from the family for some years and is shown to be a jerk in his Establishing Character Moment.
• Labyrinth: The novelization says that Merlin noticed Owl!Jareth on the way back from the park and automatically didn't like him.
• In Let the Right One In, Crazy Cat Man Gösta's many cats hiss aggressively in the presence of vampires. When Eli bites Virginia but does not kill her, thereby partially turning her, she visits Gösta's flat, whereupon his cats go berserk and start attacking her en masse.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • The horses in The Return of the King have every reason to be scared of the mountain where the Dead dwell. For once, the Humans understand the reasons for their fear. Elves, however, don't. The Dead aren't really evil, and end up being of great help to our heroes... but they're still pretty darn scary.
  • There's also a scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where a dog barks furiously at a Ringwraith, but does so while backing up. Eventually, it retreats with a whimper.
• In The Lost Boys, Nanook growls at Michael, after he drank some of the blood-in-a-wine-bottle while hanging out with the vampire hoodlums.
• Subverted in Man in the Attic. William Harley's dog takes an immediate to Slade (something Harley says he never does with strangers) and starts following him around. Harley even complains that the dog prefers Slade's company to his. The dog only starts to avoid Slade (who is secretly Jack the Ripper) when Slade literally kicks him to drive him away when Slade is attempting burn his bloodstained Ulster.
• The president's dog in Mars Attacks! barks at the Martians on the television.
• Milo does this twice in The Mask. First, he detected that The Mask was evil. Second, he detected that his owner was kidnapped when he saw Dorian's goons invade the apartment for the stolen bank money and chased after their car to rescue Stanley.
• In Mirror Mirror (1990), Susan's dogs are able to sense that there is something wrong about the antique mirror: barking and whining outside the bedroom when its powers start to manifest. Susan dismisses it.
• In The Monster Maker, Ace seems to know that Dr. Markhoff is up to no good when he enters the lab to release the Killer Gorilla to murder Maxine, and starts growling at him as soon as he approaches the cage. Markoff eventually banishes him from the room.
• In Ms. 45, the landlady's dog, who knows protagonist Thana well as she used to walk it, catches on to her increasingly strange behavior (in particular her disposing of the body of a rapist piece by piece) quickly. Initially Thana manages to placate the dog, but eventually she asks to walk it again and takes it out to the riverside, ties it up, and takes out her pistol... the final scene shows it returning to its master's apartment, having freed itself sometime after Thana spared it offscreen.
• Used a lot in the 1944 film The Mummy's Ghost, in which dogs barking the alarm or biting at his ankles actually pose a greater obstacle to the mummy's comings and goings than anything the human characters do.
• Animal is the only Muppet to notice Kermit has been replaced by Constantine in Muppets Most Wanted, by simply smelling him.
• In Near Dark, the earliest sign that love interest Mae is not all she seems is that the hero's horse goes nuts when he tries to show him to her.
• In the opening scene of No Name on the Bullet, one barks at Professional Killer John Gant a lot as he rides into the area.
• In Nope, horses tend to panic and bolt long before the human protagonists notice that the UFO is nearby.
• In Please Stand By, Pete growls at a couple right before they rob Wendy.
• In the short film adaptation of Stephen King's The Road Virus Goes North, the protagonist is dumbfounded as to why dogs bark madly at him wherever he goes. They're actually disturbed by the cursed picture he's got in his car. When the titular Road Virus himself first appears, the dog falls instantly silent except for a few terrified whimpers.
• Also used in the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red, where an otherwise nice dog bites the powerful, autistic psychic Annie. While Annie is not exactly evil, she does retaliate by causing rocks to fall from the sky and crush the house of the people who own the dog, so the dog's attitude was arguably justified.
• One of the freakier aspects of The Omen (1976) is how most animals — with the exception of one dog — react when in the presence of little Damien, the son of Satan himself. One memorable scene has Damien and his mother on safari, and their jeep being swarmed by furious baboons.
• Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz. After being thrown into a cell in an underground Nazi medical experimentation lab, the Russians note that despite the smell of decay there's no sign of rats or their droppings. "You know you're in trouble when the rats have abandoned ship."
• In both The Parent Trap (1961) and The Parent Trap (1998), the dog owned by one of the twins reacts with barking and growling when the other twin, pretending to be her sister, tries to greet her/him. (In this case, the twin isn't evil — the dog just knows she isn't who she's claiming to be.) In the latter film, the dog also has an evil-detecting reaction to the twins' father's new girlfriend.
• Averted in Perfume. Thanks to the villain's complete lack of scent, he steps right over a sleeping dog as he's sneaking up to Laura's bedroom, without it sounding the alarm.
• In Poltergeist, the family dog starts barking at the walls after the titular ghosts arrive.
• In Port of Shadows, the stray dog that follows Jean around for most of the film starts barking angrily at Zabel when he shows up at the seaside bar where Jean is hiding in a back room with Nelly, Zabel's ward. When Jean stops by Zabel's shop later in the film, the dog starts barking at Zabel again. We later learn that Zabel killed Nelly's would-be suitor, Maurice, in a jealous rage born of his own lust for her.
• Kelly's dog Ginger in Race with the Devil is the first to notice the cultists. It later gets hanged from the RV's door.
• Reign of Fire. A tethered hawk is used to detect the approach of dragons, though it proves less effective at detecting the approach of a convoy of gung-ho American dragonslayers.
• In Relative Fear, Earl's dog barks at Adam every time he's in the room. It turns out he's really reacting to the presence of Garrett Madison in the attic.
• Resident Evil (2002): The dogs kept in cages in the Umbrella Corporation laboratory are the first to sense that the virus has been released, barking as they smell it flowing from the air vents.
• Return of the Scarecrow: In one scene, a dog is seen barking at the front door of an old couple's house because Virgil and the scarecrow are right outside it.
• During his villain monologue Richard III complains that dogs bark at him whenever he's nearby. Well what does he expect when he's about to drive a tank through the wall?
• The Silence (2019). The hairs on the back of the family dog stand up whenever the vesps are near. Unfortunately when the vesps do show up the dog barks constantly at them; as they're attracted to sound the father is forced to release the dog outside the car to be eaten by the vesps, rather than risk his family.
• The dog-like alien creature adopted by Riddick is disturbed at the approach of rain. Riddick tells it there's nothing to worry about, goes to pet it... then realises from its tense body that he'd better start worrying.
• Run Sweetheart Run: At the restaurant, a dog barks at Ethan while he is on his date with Cherie. He drops the nice guy act and yells at the owner to control "your fucking dog!" It's the first hint that he is a monstrous creature who will later hunt down Cherie.
• In M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, the dogs smell big-time alien and bark and bluster accordingly.
• In Sleepwalkers, the villains morph into somewhat feline creatures, but are hated by actual cats.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022): Ozzie goes hostile when Robotnik returns to the Wachowskis' home as Sonic parties inside alone.
• Super 8: All the dogs in the area run away to other towns because they can tell there's a monster running around.
• Terminator: Ever since Skynet churned out the titular robots disguised as humans, the Human Resistance found a way to counter this by training "sniffer" dogs to smell human hands. Dogs can be further trained to hear the sound of Terminator servos moving, which is too low to be detected by humans.
  • Dogs are used to detect Terminators in the Robot War in The Terminator. In the 1984 scenes, a pet dog yaps madly at the T-800 as it walks up to the wrong Sarah Connor's house to murder her. Later on, Sarah and Kyle are alerted to the T-800's presence by a German Shepherd barking loudly. Near the ending, Sarah brings another German Shepherd with her for good measure, wondering if the next human is actually a Terminator.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day: The dog does bark like crazy off-screen at the malevolent T-1000 while it's impersonating John's foster mother. In a Deleted Scene, this dog is killed by the T-1000, eventually. However, the film includes a scene where a dog does not react to the T-800. The filmmakers admit this is a plot hole, but felt it was better to not confuse the audiences.
  • In Terminator: Dark Fate, a Terminator who lived for years among humans and even adopted a human family also has a pet dog who is entirely comfortable with his presence. As per this trope, this is a sign that he is no longer out to Kill All Humans because he has learnt human traits like empathy. The trope is played straight with the Rev-9 Terminator who turns up at his target's house posing as a friend, and the dog immediately starts barking at him.
• The Thing (1982): Although they don't react to the Thing immediately, the dogs eventually rouse themselves and start growling and snarling at the newcomer, despite its (initially) normal appearance, presumably sensing the internal changes as it starts to shapeshift from canine to alien form. The fact that they do take so long to react, in contrast to most examples, is an early indication of just how seamlessly The Thing imitates its hosts.
• Tremors: Two instances of this happen, first with a farmer's flock of sheep, and second with a pair of horses the protagonists happen to be riding on even though there isn't any danger visible. The farmer doesn't realize until it's too late that something's wrong, but one of the protagonists figures out the horses "got wind of something they don't like". Sure enough, it's a reliable sign that the movie's Sand Worm monsters are about to attack.
• In Vampire in Brooklyn, a police dog and a mobster's pet cat both react with angry growling when Max is around. He kills them both to avoid being outed as a vampire.
• In Vampires vs. Zombies, Bob's dog growls at the gas station attendant when he comes back into the station. It is later revealed that he had been bitten by Carmilla while outside and turned into a vampire.
• In When the Bough Breaks (1994), a girl is kidnapped while walking her dog. The dog barks as the kidnapper approaches, but the girl is listening to her Walkman and doesn't hear him until it's too late.
• The Whisperer in Darkness: In the teaser for the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's adaptation, a scholar listens to a wax cylinder recording of a man spouting occult ravings while a cat sits impassively nearby. Suddenly ANOTHER voice cuts in on the recording, and the cat startles and hisses. In the movie itself, a colleague hurriedly switches off the phonograph when he's been listening to the wax cylinder recording of the cultist ceremony throughout the night.
• The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy's dog Toto once bit Elvira Gulch, who is depicted as being quite nasty. Aunt Em later says of Toto: "He's really gentle. With gentle people, that is." This indicates that he bit Miss Gulch because he recognized her evil nature.
• More like "Evil Detecting Horses", in The Wolfman (2010). Also evil detecting bear and evil detecting deer. Ironically averted by the single dog (it always growls at Lawrence, well before he is infected, while it is completely oblivious to the original werewolf because he is its owner).
• Wolves: After Cayden starts work at the Tollerman farm, his voiceover muses that "Even if the Tollermans didn't know what I was, the animals sure did," over an aerial view of a flock of sheep running away as he gets close with their feed.
• In Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, Zoltan was originally this: turned by Dracula in vengeance after it protected a woman from him. The Drake's dog Samson is also this; able to sense the presence of Zoltan and Veidt.

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