Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Evil Dead (Alvarez)

Evil Dead. Fede Alvarez, 2013.
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Edition screened: Sony Blu-ray, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.

Summary: Display of tortured and murdered animals.

Details: Many animals are found in the basement of the cabin, hanging dead from the ceiling and bound with twine as they were when tortured to death. 
1) A first and focused shot of one dead cat, 2:30-2:40, followed by an overview of the room 2:56-3:00. The hanging animals are seen in the background during dialogue through 5:02, when the title screen appears. There are close-ups of cats but some animals are larger.
2) People enter the basement and see this same scene, but it is later and the bodies are withered and decaying 16:46-17:05.
3) A trail of blood at 32:12 is followed to a dying whimpering dog at 32:24. The bloody dog is cradled while it dies, 32:43-33:06, then we see a nearby hammer and cut to a Deadite hammering … something.

As usual, that ol’ devil Liberal Hollywood cuddles up to the misinformed fantasies of animal-hating, religiously paranoid conservative ’Murika.

This is poor and base work in many ways. Obviously there is the gratuitous focus on recently tortured animals, and intentional muddying of the water that differentiates magick from satanism. (Ok, so poor and base in my opinion, but right on message for the God, Guns, and Guts crowd.) But most significantly, this 2013 effort fails to understand how important a sense of humor was to Raimi’s original game-changing Evil Dead (1981). A sense of humor is not the same thing as making stupid jokes.

Animal abuse aside, the film begins with a truly horrifying and well-made set piece showing a Deadite’s execution/soul liberation. Soon thereafter comes the brightest moment in the film as we meet a cast member sitting on the hood of Ash’s Delta 88, abandoned at the cabin thirty years earlier. But the script quickly devolves into 80 additional minutes of James Bond-style chainsaw-through-the-head/“splitting-headache” knee-slappers.

 Sense of humor: desirable, absent. 
Stupid jokes: undesirable, plentiful.

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