Have you ever noticed how in so many horror movies, the pets are always the first to die? And if they're not the ones who die before the antagonist kills the humans of the story, they're bound to be murdered at one point or another?

A movie starts off with a family arriving at their new house (which they'll soon find out to be haunted). The parents come out of the car, followed by the children, and—oh! Would you look at that? There's the family's dog jumping out of the car.

This is exactly what happened in The Conjuring. Who was the first family member to die in this movie? Spoiler alert: it's the dog. Even though she sensed something sinister coming from the house and avoided going inside, Sadie (the dog) was the first to bite the dust; after the first night spent in their new house, the parents end up finding poor Sadie's corpse in the bushes.

Animals aren't only victims of ghostly activity, but they're also terrorized by human antagonists. In Rod Lurie's thriller Straw Dogs, the couple's cat was tortured and murdered as a threat to scare her owners; the hapless animal was found hanging by its neck in the bedroom closet.

I know (most) films don't actually harm animals in the making of their pieces. Yet, the idea of a helpless pet that doesn't deserve to suffer and die at the hands of some evil spirit or serial killer still bothers me. At least you can argue that a character had it coming because of something they did earlier in the movie; animals, on the other hand, are completely innocent.

Some of the pets can even sense danger before the humans of the story can. It's always been said that animals have a sixth sense when it comes to detecting paranormal activity, as well as evil personalities within humans. Maybe this is why they're killed off so early on in the movies: to avoid their owners noticing their strange behavior and questioning the safety of their environment.

What makes matters even worse is that it seems as if the deaths of these animals don't even add much to the stories anyway; the dead pets being found by their owners triggers a reaction in the audience, but only adds a little bit of depth to the plot. In other words, the film is going to play out the same way whether the family's dog is mauled or not.

I'm not a film director and I'm definitely not the person to come up with the idea for this generation's next great horror movie. But, as an avid horror fan and cinephile, I'm confident that I'm not the only one who thinks the furry characters in these movies deserve better.

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