Animal is an American 2014 horror thiller film directed by Brett Simmons.
The movie follows a group of five college students on a camping trip to the woods, with one of them guiding them to find a waterfall. Getting lost in the way, however, causes the group to come across a group of savage beasts bent on killing them for food, and they're chased into a cabin in the woods, trapping them together with a group of previous survivors, sieged under the attacks of the creatures, they try to figure out a way to survive.
The movie had a limited released and through VOD.
Tropes
- Action Prologue: The movie starts with 2 couples running through the woods, trying to get away from an unseen assailant, with one of them dying, dragged away by the creature. After that, the movie cuts to the five college students driving to the woods.
- Bittersweet Ending: Everyone besides Mandy is dead, who managed to kill one of the monsters and leave the woods, but there are more creatures out there, and they might have picked up her scent.
- Black Dude Dies First: Douglas's wife Barbara is the first to die. Inverted with Alissa, who is the last to die.
- Bury Your Gays: Sean and Jeff both die.
- Camp Gay: Sean has all the stereotypical mannerisms of a gay man, which hints at The Reveal that he was secretly in a relationship with Jeff.
- Car Fu: Mandy kills the second monster when it gets atop of the car, letting it drop forward then running over him, and driving back over him once more.
- Closed Circle: The main characters get trapped in a cabin, trying to find some protection from the monsters. While it does help to keep them at bay, they're also now sieged inside the house with the other three survivors as the monster circle around the place.
- Decoy Protagonist: Both Carl and Alissa have shades of this, the latter more so.
- Carl is initially presented as the calm, heroic leader of the group from the group from the opening, and retains shades of this after the college students meet up with him. It doesn't save him.
- Alissa is initially presented as the movie's Final Girl. She's calm, resourceful, and relatively intelligent when compared to the others in her group. She's also the emotional centerpiece of the group, which consists of her brother, her best friend, her boyfriend, and her brother's secret lover. She makes it very far into the movie, but still dies at the end.
- Diabolus ex Nihilo: Neither the characters nor we of the audience receive any insight into what the monsters in the film are. Where did they come from? How long have they existed? Are they a natural creature that just went unnoticed until now or are they some kind of mutants? Your guess is as good as anyone’s.
- Double Tap: Mandy does this to one of the monsters with a car.
- The End... Or Is It?: While Mandy manages to kill the second creature and presumably drive away to safety, a third creature then appears and inspects the corpse of its deceased kin. The creature then cries out, suggesting it is calling to even more creatures which implies that there is a far greater number of them out there.
- Final Girl: Alissa has all the makings of one, being a capable girl with a strong sense of justice and the wits to try to keep the group in check. Sadly, she doesn't make it to the end, being killed by the second monster, leaving Mandy with this title.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Carl's death is left offscreen, with only some blood splattering onto his light to signify it.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Carl pulls one of these trying to save an injured Matt. Doubles as Senseless Sacrifice when Douglas murders Matt shortly thereafter.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Douglas attempts to justify trapping Sean and Carl to die outside the cabin with the monster as this, referring to it as simply a hard decision he had to make.
- Idiot Ball: After coming across the monster for the first time, one of the characters has the genius idea of throwing a rock at/towards it in order to scare it away. Right, because the first time you see a bipedal monster that you have reason to believe has already killed a person, your first instinct is going to be to try and scare it instead of running like hell.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: Mandy reveals that she's pregnant. She's no safer from the monster than anyone else. However, it's downplayed and eventually subverted, as she's visibly very early into her pregnancy, and winds up being a Pregnant Badass that manages to survive on her own.
- Jerkass: Douglas does little more than stand in everyone's way and be obnoxiously aggressive.
- Killed Offscreen: Carl and Sean, though the former's body is seen later.
- Kill It with Fire: Alissa comes up with the idea of killing the creature by trapping it inside the house and setting the whole thing on fire, letting it burn to death. It works for the first one.
- Lack of Empathy: Douglas seems to have no concern for others losing their loved ones at best, or actively inflicts more emotional damage against them at worst.
- The Leader: Carl, at first. Alissa takes this role after he dies, with most of the others deferring to her judgement.
- The Load: Vicky doesn't do much throughout the film. She's presented as much more sympathetic than most examples.
- Mood Whiplash: While Matt is dying, he shares a sweet moment with Alissa, only for a newly released Douglas to immediately take that opportunity to bash Matt's head to death.
- Pet the Dog: After Carl dies, Douglas admits he was the most capable of the group. He also admits to liking Alissa's idea to burn the titular creature better than using anyone as bait.
- The latter is quickly subverted when Douglas murders Matt.
- Pregnant Badass: Even after watching everyone else die, Mandy still manages to save herself and kill one of the monsters by running it over.
- The Reveal:
- Mandy was pregnant with Jeff's child, and Jeff and Sean turn out to be in love with each other, despite Jeff being in a relationship already.
- The monster is not alone. There's at least three of them.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Very shortly after murdering Matt to use him as bait, Douglas is killed by the creature.
- Sacrificial Lion: Jeff, the biggest and most physically fit member of the team is the first one to get killed right after the group finds a cabin.
- Semper Fi: Early on in the film, the group find a somewhat faded U.S. Marine Corps patch on the ground. One character ponders what the Marines would be doing out in the middle of nowhere. It’s possible this was meant to suggest that the creatures were created by the government and the military was either testing them or trying to destroy them after they got loose. This is pure speculation however as this plot point is never addressed in the film again.
- Sole Survivor: Mandy is the only one to survive.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Once the creature had set sight on the members of the group, it will not rest until it has eaten them.
