This article examines selected horror films featuring femmes animales – figures whose status, suspended between humanity and animality, challenges the androcentric and anthropocentric order, as noted by Barbara Creed. An ecofeminist reading of these protagonists reveals that the apparent empowerment conveyed through visual metaphors associated with animal captivity is not only superficial but also replicates patriarchal structures and perpetuates both female and nonhuman oppression. Constructions of animality, the motif of being stared at (as a living exhibit in a zoo or as the object of the male gaze), and the representation of female suffering through images of meat and cages, all contribute to a dualistic hierarchical thinking. This, in turn, devalues that which is non-male, non-human, and what deviates from the primacy of reason in the androcentric and anthropocentric world shaped by the Western intellectual tradition.
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