My favourite would be Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation of a classic story by one of my favourite authors, Daphne Du Maurier. Released in 1963, The Birds was the stuff of nightmares.

In this film, everyday, innocuous birds like seagulls, crows, sparrows and hens that chirp, tweet, sing and squeak their way into our hearts, turn rogue. The film depicts a sudden upending of our world by the very creatures we take for granted. That humans are in danger from their avian companions is very frightening. Nothing unusual happens; there is no loud roaring of gigantic, monstrous creatures, just a quiet mutiny. Both the book and the film based on it scared me out of my wits and the film remains my favourite creature feature to this day. (Which is your favourite creature feature... July 31)

Pampa Paul

An American Werewolf in London is a classic. I saw this movie when I was too young to be watching it and it has been a favourite since. The practical effects were staggering then and they have stood the test of time. The story is solid as it takes you through the creation and eventual destruction of one of cinema’s greatest monsters. It weaves its web so effectively that it is difficult not to feel a bit sad when the story finds its conclusion.

Nili Ghosh

My favourite creature feature is Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water. What separates the movie from its many counterparts in the fairy-tale romance genre is the talent of the director and the passion he put into each frame. It’s a beautifully transfixing adult fairy tale with elements of Beauty and the Beast and Creature from the Black Lagoon while showing a real sense of unsettlement and affectionate nostalgia from film and music of the golden age. We follow a mute woman who falls in love with an amphibian creature who is being imprisoned in a lab, while both American and Russian scientists look to weaponise it, or eventually kill it, in the heat of the Cold War. It makes for a very emotional story that sees two individuals from completely different worlds loving each other for who they are, despite the monstrous circumstances surrounding them.

More than anything, what makes this romance work is the protagonist at its centre and the talent of the woman who plays her. Sally Hawkins gives a heartwarming performance as a differently-abled woman in a society that rejects her. Without speaking a single word, she makes one absolutely root for her character and the love she has found in a creature.

My second favourite is Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which I watched as a child and was genuinely terrified at that time. Spielberg did an excellent job building the suspense and scaring the viewer. He manages to generate incredible tension and plays with the audience’s expectations. There is a scene in which the audience is sure that the shark is going to appear any minute, and so when a completely different shock occurs it’s a real jolt. There are other scenes in which the shark makes a sudden, unexpected appearance and the audience is thrown completely.

The music perfectly builds the tension as well. The all-too-familiar cello is genuinely haunting but the rest of the score deserves credit as well. There are scenes later in the movie when the heroes appear to be on top and the music lets us know that victory is at hand. The audience didn’t feel they were just watching a movie about a monster killing people, they felt like they were watching real characters battle a genuine natural phenomenon.

Dyutiman Bhattacharya

‘Creature feature’ is a genre where the movie either becomes a complete nightmare or a disastrous comedy. It is so difficult to convince the audience that the monster exists. Jurassic Park (1993) and Jaws (1975) own my heart and will stay with me forever as the best creature features of all time. These Academy Award-winning films are best in terms of suspense, storyline, intensity, terror, anxiety and jumpscare. In the Jurassic Park sequels, there are more dinosaurs, more encounters and more terrifying moments but the very first movie directed by Steven Spielberg steals the show. I must also mention The Meg (2018) because of its gripping storyline, suspense, horror, believable acting and, of course, Jason Statham.

Pallabi Chatterjee

Most films in the creature feature genre are animated and a compilation of sci-fi. These films are mostly curated by animators and directors have to rely on animators so that they can bring the essence of what they want to feature in a film. These either take us to the era of dinosaurs, that is, the past or to that part of the world which is untouched by modern civilisation. Sometimes, it takes us to a future where advancement in technology creates amusement and astonishment, where extinct animals have been digitally recreated and confined within a theme park. As shown in most sci-fi movies, creatures are made by scientists such as in Avatar to occupy Pandora. In Jurassic World, scientists created transgenic dinosaurs which cause chaos and threaten life. King Kong, Godzilla, Anaconda and Jurassic Park franchises are some of my favourites. But some films also portray a restricted area where humans are prohibited such as The Hills Have Eyes with horror scenes and shocks in every twist of the plot. Its sequel too is full of horror and shock.

Moubani Paul

When it comes to choosing the definitive best example of a natural horror movie that fits within the creature feature, you can hardly find a better film than Steven Spielberg‘s classic, Jaws. Set on the coastal New England island town of Amity, Jaws tells the story of a colossal great white shark that begins preying on swimmers as the town prepares for its annual 4th of July celebrations. After several attacks end in multiple swimmers’ deaths, the sheriff of Amity Island (Roy Scheider) joins a bookish oceanographer (Roy Dreyfuss) and an expert fisherman (Robert Shaw) as they try to hunt the shark down for good. The film that established Spielberg as a director and was also the one credited with creating the modern summer blockbuster, Jaws remains one of the highlights of Spielberg’s career, nearly 50 years after its release. Its superb premise, script and John Williams’ now-famous score won praise when the film hit theatres in 1975, as did the performances of the three principal actors.

Jaws is a perfectly crafted summer blockbuster disguised as a horror film. Spielberg fired on all cylinders here, crafting an unforgettable masterpiece that has yet to be topped in its approach to the genre by not showing the monster till the very end. Some have tried the same format, but not with the same results that Spielberg was able to achieve. The cast is also excellent; in particular, Robert Shaw, whose reaction — you know the one — at the end of the film still gives me nightmares about getting too far out in the water. After you watch this film, you feel like you’ll never go into the water again. One of the most well-known natural horror films ever made, Jaws paved the way for numerous rip-off horror films (Piranha, Alligator, Grizzly) that followed over the next decades, and still remains the basis for all natural horror movies today.

Roshni Ojha

My all-time favourite creature feature is Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). The movie is a perfect combination of a suitable story, fine performances, awesome visual effects and wonderful sound. The imposing imagery is so authentic that all the types of dinosaurs looked real on screen. The movie is about a lonely island filled with lots of dinosaurs which were created artificially for a scientific experiment. The actual horror begins after a team with two children gets trapped in that awful world, in poor weather conditions that have led to a power breakdown. The T-Rex chase scene and the Raptor kitchen scenes are iconic. The opening scene and many more are pretty scary. The ambience was nicely created with haunting sound effects. The audience actually felt they had entered a world where dinosaurs ruled. So the experience of watching the movie was beautiful. It is definitely one of the classics.

Sarbani Banerjee

My favourite creature feature is the hugely entertaining monster movie Godzilla (1954). The story of this iconic monster film, which revolves around a prehistoric fearsome gargantuan lizard, was simple, but at the same time, a fascinating one. The story was so well-developed and told so engagingly that it completely held the attention of the viewers till the last scene. I saw this immensely thrilling movie an uncountable number of times since my childhood and I strongly believe that IT is a masterpiece and one of the greatest and finest creature features ever made.

Sourish Misra