This chapter outlines the history of Animal Horror Cinema and highlights important periods and discursive developments within the genre. The chapter also discusses this type of cinema in relation to other kinds of horror films and observes that the focus on the relation between animality and humanity makes films like Jaws (1975), The Birds (1963) and Cujo (1983) different in theoretically significant ways from supernatural horror narratives and from ‘eco-horror’ films. Economic and technical restrictions often mean that animal horror films are not realist in a strict sense. The size of animals is often exaggerated and they are given human traits. Even so, human characters’ encounters with animals in animal horror cinema is more ‘real’ than the kind of encounters with the invisible, supernatural forces from beyond the realm of reality that have dominated the history of horror cinema.