Dude. It’s a serial killer who uses sharks as his weapon of choice! How can this go wrong? Dangerous Animals almost sounds too perfect if you’re a certain type of moviegoer, just looking for some fun, summer trash horror to indulge in. And for the most part, it fits the bill. It even has Jai Courtney, who played insane Aussie Captain Boomerang in two Suicide Squad movies, playing another unhinged Aussie. It’s something he’s REALLY good at, and he’s a big part of why Dangerous Animals is as enjoyable as it is. And yet, you wish the film were as sharp as the teeth of its aquatic predators.
Dangerous Animals is directed by Sean Byrne. He’s not a known filmmaker or anything, but horror fans know his killer debut, 2009’s The Loved Ones, as one of those unsung genre flicks that you love introducing people to. He’s only done a handful of movies with long gaps in-between, so this is a treat to have him back behind the camera. His instincts over the use of gore and tension are on point. It’s the other stuff that nearly sinks this film to the bottom of the ocean.
Set in Australia’s Gold Coast, Dangerous Animals begins in gruesome fashion. That’s when we meet big, burly, crusty tugboat captain Tucker (Courtney), who takes tourists out so they can get up close and personal with the fishes in a shark cage. He meets two just such adventuresome folks, Greg (Liam Grenke) and Heather (Ella Newton), the latter shy and awkward and when she’s shy she gets giggly. She might even have a thing for ol’ Tucker (or Tuckah!! the way Courtney says it), blushing at his flirtations and casually dropping that she isn’t Greg’s girlfriend or anything. Well, unfortunately for her, Tucker is a deranged serial killer. Poor Greg doesn’t stand a chance. But poor Heather…well, Tucker has a fondness for keeping his female victims around for a while so he can turn them into human chum for the sharks. He likes to film their deaths on camera to watch and get off to later. Yeah, this guy’s a sicko.
So Dangerous Animals starts off just as twisted and bloody as we hoped, with Courtney leaping off the screen as a potentially classic psycho. Bring It.
The film takes a turn, however, with the introduction of Zephyr, and if you hate that name already just wait until you meet her. Played by Yellowstone‘s Hassie Harrison, she’s a gorgeous no-bullshit American surfer, a loner with a tragic past and serious trust issues. She just drives around and catches the waves, man. Meh. She has a pretty lame meet-cute with buttoned-up dude Moses (Josh Heuston) at a grocery store, and he promptly blackmails her into driving him to his car for a jumpstart. But it’s cool, because he’s vaguely religious or something and kinda cute so whatever. She leaves him high and dry after one night, and if only it had stayed that way. Sadly, these two have anti-chemistry and we kinda hope Tucker finds them and makes them shark food.
Well, we almost get our wish. Tucker soon has Zephyr trapped on his boat, alongside poor Heather, and Dangerous Animals becomes a lot of “hurry up and wait” chase stuff around the same boat for ninety minutes. Even at such a brief runtime, it struggles to find things to keep our attention when Tucker isn’t dangling his victims over a sea of hungry sharks. There’s only so many times he can chase Heather and, eventually dumbass Moses, around and somehow not accomplish what he set out to do. It’s like he’s never done this before…and yet we know that Tucker has done this lots of times. His sudden ineptitude is insane.
Fortunately, Courtney is an absolute blast of gonzo nutcase energy and unchecked Aussie machismo. He chews up every line like he was devouring a vegemite sandwich. Just listen to the way he calls his female prey “marlins”, hanging on the word like a worm hangs at the end of a hook. Courtney is so good (and jacked, a remnant from his Spartacus days), and the protagonists so weak, that we end up cheering the serial killer to do his business and move on to more interesting victims. Dangerous Animals needed to take a deeper dive into its trashy, B-movie premise, leaning even further into Courtney’s unchecked performance. Because when it does, there’s a great time to be had hanging with this shark-obsessed maniac. Everything else can be tossed overboard.
Dangerous Animals is open in theaters now from IFC Films and Shudder.
