Consider a cat. Smaller than their more fearsome cousins (tigers, lions, et cetera), yet still possessed of a wild instinct arguably driven, rather than hindered, by their relatively small stature and adorability. A large dog can be fearsome even to someone who grew up in the Hotel for Dogs. Even Owen Wilson's "Me" in the seminal dog film Marley and Me might be at least a little concerned when confronting the titular pooch from Cujo. And yet, the history of film seems to point toward a particularly fascinating fear when it comes to the frail feline. Supernatural purr-fect killing machines or misunderstood magic misanthropes? In honor of Hyperreal's screening of 1992's The Cat, let's take a look at some of cinema's most famous horror movie cats and rank them on a scale of 1 to 5. Naturally this is not an exhaustive list by any means, so feel free to share your own lists in the comments section.

Ghost Cat

Ghost Cat is a member of that oh-so-rarified category of films that seem destined to only be discussed during movie trivia contests or listicles like this one. A Canadian tv movie made in the 2000s for Animal Planet about a possibly spectral cat does not seem like the type of film likely to live in anyone's memory for a year, let alone 20, but Ghost Cat has one thing going for it. It was an early role for Elliot Page post-Trailer Park Boys and I Downloaded a Ghost, but before he popped in America with Hard Candy and X-Men: The Last Stand. Though I can’t find an interview where he acknowledges the performance in any real way, I also haven’t looked very hard, if I’m being honest. Feel free to send any Ghost Cat related pitches to reviews@hyperrealfilm.club if you want to dig deeper. Anyway, as for the ghost cat in question, it is not actually a ghost and decidedly not malevolent, no matter what the trailer tries to tell you.

Evil rating: 1. This is a cat you can get at the local pound that has a name like Crud Bumper and you're warned that it "loves being near people."

House

Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 masterpiece House is about a lot of things. The fallout, both literal and psychological, of Japan's involvement in World War II, the pressure of rigid gender and heteronormative roles pressing down on the youth from the country's elders, and, most importantly, a truly iconic cat. Is Blanche the familiar of Auntie? An aspect of her personality given pseudo-independence as they torture the girls together? Just an evil cat that likes to vomit blood? Are we missing the watermelons for the bananas by even asking this question instead of considering the powerfully unique filmmaking and dreamy density of Obayashi’s work? I don't think anyone, Obayashi and his daughter included, know the actual answers to any of those questions, but in this House, we stan a legend.

Evil rating: 5. The cat's got your tongue because it's chewing on it.

Pet Sematary

Men will literally bury their kid's dead cat in a demonic gravesite rather than take their kids to therapy et cet, et cet. But if the cat is possessed by a demon, does that mean that the cat itself is truly evil? I don't think that most people walk away from The Exorcist thinking that Reagan had it coming, as long as you specify that you're not talking about the president. However, the evil inside Church manifests in profoundly cat-like ways. It's scratching at people and tearing apart birds and bugs. Minus a particularly unpleasant odor of rotting flesh, you've pretty much described a normal day in a cat owner's life. Besides its resurrection being an act of malicious destruction toward the laws of God, man, and morality, has anything really changed after Church digs itself out and trots back home?

Evil rating: 2. If the cat comes back post-possession but it's just a little meaner than before, maybe you had kind of a mean cat.

Nine Lives

Nine Lives is technically not a horror movie in the same way that getting hit by a truck is technically not the same as getting horrifically beaten up by someone. And yet the physical and mental wounds remain regardless. Starring Kevin Spacey as a workaholic father who gets trapped inside the body of a cat, Nine Lives is a profoundly unsettling and off-putting movie even before everything with Kevin Spacey left the shadowy corners of Hollywood gossip and came burning and screaming out into the sun like the vampires in Blade. A magic pet store owner played by Christopher Walken forces rich capitalists to learn how to balance life and family by peeling off one life at a time of a cat called Mr. Fuzzypants. Corporate “intrigue” is a relatively large chunk of this movie made for children. The climax involves a fake suicide attempt turned company bonding stunt. Barry Sonnenfeld, why did you do this???

Evil rating: 5. The devil lives within us all and this movie gives us a glimpse of his sinister work.

Constantine

On the one hand, John Constantine in the movie Constantine uses the cat as a portal to hell. This seems like a pretty strong checkmark in the "cats are evil" column. On the other hand, the beginning of that scene has him say, verbatim, "cats are good." As it stands, we're looking at a deadlocked vote. One could argue that he's saying cats are good as in useful, but this is a movie about a character that, to this day, no one can agree on how to pronounce his name. (It's con-stan-tine rhymes with wine, for the record, though that only applies if you think the writer/co-creator has a say in how to pronounce the name of a character he invented rather than the faceless conglomerate that technically owns the copyright.) Regardless, perhaps the movie is trying to battle against the perception of cats as either blameless angels or malevolent devils by showcasing the shades of grey that exist within our fuzzy friends. Not all angels in Constantine are good insofar as we understand and define the term, after all.

Evil rating: 2.5. Shall we consider that cats may, as Nietzche once mused, simply be Beyond Good and Evil?

Cats

I have not seen this film because I remain hopeful that the now-legendary "butthole cut" of the film exists and will one day be seen. That said, I saw the trailers for months prior to the theatrical release and saw clips released months after it left theaters and it left me confused and lightly nauseated in an exciting way. I think it's nice that there's a movie made by as close to an objectively bad director as an artistic medium can produce that cost almost $100 million about human(?) cats competing in a singoff to show that they're worth of dying. I think it's fun that theater kids have this.

Fearsome Felines on Film Ranked by Evilness