Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Sean Byrne
Written by Nick Lepard
The Dangerous Animals of the title are sharks, but they are the weapons, not the killers. Jai Courtney is Tucker, a serial killer who uses his shark dive boat as an excuse to take victims on a one-way trip out to sea. Zephyr is a target who proves to be a greater challenge than most of his prey, and Tucker likes a victim with some spunk. Oz horror is notoriously brutal, where happy endings are rare. The man who brought you The Loved Ones and The Devil’s Candy has returned with a highly entertaining and original variant of the serial killer film.
Don’t blame the sharks. They’re only doing what comes naturally to them. You can hold Tucker in judgment, however. He’s a psychopathic thug, traumatized by surviving a great white attack when he was young. Tucker has converted that emotional shock into a desire to see others get eaten by sharks. He’s funny that way. Dangerous Animals is yet another entertaining horror film to come out from Down Under in recent years. The success of Lake Mungo, Late Night With the Devil, Wolf Creek, Bring Her Back, The Babadook, The Babysitter, Cargo, Talk to Me, and Sean Byrne’s grim but goofy The Loved Ones has established Oz as a hotbed for superior horror storytelling. You can now add Dangerous Animals to this list.
The imagery of going fishing with live human prey is powerful. True, sharks tend not to see humans as food in the wild. Check out the YouTube drone videos of all the great white sharks cruising around Santa Barbara and Monterey Bay. But, as Tucker will point out, when you chum the water to attract the sharks, there are… expectations. Try not to wriggle too much!
The Cast of Dangerous Animals
- Hassie Harrison plays Zephyr, an American surfing vagabond currently catching waves in Queensland, Australia.
- Jai Courtney plays Tucker, the owner of an off-the-beaten-path shark cage diving operation.
- Josh Heusten plays Moses, a real estate agent who becomes smitten with Zephyr.
- Ella Newton plays Heather, a tourist who signs up for a shark dive with Tucker.
- Liam Greinke plays Greg, another tourist who signs up for the shark dive.
- Rob Carlton plays Dave, Tucker’s scruffy dock slip neighbor.
A Synopsis of Dangerous Animals
Greg and Heather show up at the shabby dock where the tourist trap “Tucker’s Experience” debarks. Heather raises some doubts and fears about both going into the water with sharks and the operation’s general shoddy look. Tucker arrives and convinces them to go on the tour, taking note that both of the tourists are alone. This is going to be a one-way trip for Greg and Heather.
Zephyr is a superior wave rider. She’s been on the move, hunting for the perfect wave, living out of her van, now in Australia. She’s not above shoplifting to feed herself. Moses, who needs to get his car jumped (a metaphor if there ever was one), catches Zephyr and blackmails her into joining the cars. The metaphor turns literal, and despite the rocky initial interaction are overcome with youthful lust. However, Zephyr isn’t ready for a serious relationship, so she leaves Moses’ apartment early, heading for the beach.
At the beach parking lot, the only other vehicle is… Tucker’s truck. When her back is turned, he sneaks up and abducts her. Zephyr wakes up, bound to a bed in the bilge of Tucker’s boat. Heather is there too, another abductee cuffed to a bed. They await their fate, as Tucker has been capturing tourists and feeding them to sharks. He chums the water, and then dangles his victims into the water with his shark cage hoist. He’s been filming them so he can watch for his own viewing pleasure, and he has a big collection of videotapes of his former victims.
Zephyr’s a fighter, but Tucker’s a big dude with experience in slaughter. The water is full of sharks… the boat has a psycho killer on board. Good luck, ladies.
Evaluation
Dangerous Animals brings a unique, fun twist to the serial killer genre. Combining the terror of the evergreen shark horror trope with the equally evergreen psychopath trope, it’s surprising that it hasn’t been done before. It’s a tight cast, with well-developed characters. Zephyr is a fantastic protagonist. She’s spunky, tough, and courageous, a modern final girl worthy of the showdown of wits and brawn to come. Josh Heuston is a fine supporting player as the wannabe knight in shining armor.
Tucker will go down as one of the more memorable serial killers of recent vintage. On the scale of horror-movie serial killers, he belongs to the Freddy Krueger school rather than the Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees variant. He is a killer with personality. He also has the flamboyant, unsettling behavior of Buffalo Bill. He’s a weirdo, but he’s an entertaining one. I prefer my villains with a bit of Charisma, and Jai Courtney provides that in bushels.
The boat is a fine set, big enough for a bit of cat and mouse, but small enough to limit the actions of the protagonists. The sharks are impressively rendered. Except for the underwater sequences, they appear quite authentic. I also appreciate the way the sharks scale up as the movie progresses. There have been so many shark movies, many of which use accidents or shipwrecks to put the cast in danger. What makes this fun is the combination of the cunning killer and the animal savagery.
Some of the initial dialogue is a bit stiff, though it gets better once the action gets going. And, for experienced horror fans, the story beats are very familiar. Some of that familiarity makes for some of the fun. This is a fun house horror film, not an arthouse indie think piece.
Concluding Thoughts
This is 100% a fun popcorn thriller. If you are looking for a fun night of cat-and-mouse theater, this would be an excellent pick. For fans of shark horror, this is a cut above. I would safely place this film shoulder to shoulder with Deep Blue Sea and The Shallows for presentation and entertainment value. It doesn’t rise to the raw terror of Open Water, or the pinnacle of Jaws, but this should put a smile on your face.
Dangerous Animals is available for streaming download on Amazon, iTunes, Shudder, and Google Play. The movie is rated R for violence, gore, sexual situations, brief nudity, and language… the full buffet of R-rated criteria. It is, however, an ideal slumber party movie for teens (with parental approval, right?). Here’s a tip if you want to go shark cage diving: check for references! Cheaper isn’t necessarily… safer.
Review by Eric Li
