Title: Dangerous Animals
Describe This Movie In One Deep Blue Sea Quote:
JANICE: Beneath this glassy surface, a world of gliding monsters!
Brief Plot Synopsis: Aberrant Aussie assails American, applies animal assistance.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 4 P.T. Barnums out of 5.
Tagline: “You’re safer in the water.”
Better Tagline: “They still sell blank VHS tapes?”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: American surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is caravanning her way across Australia (well, the Gold Coast). Her vagabond ways lead to encounters both pleasant — hooking up with Moses (Josh Heuston) — and less so, such as getting kidnapped by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a serial killer with a very Australian-specific way of both killing and disposing of his victims.
“Critical” Analysis: Going solely by network TV ratings and Shudder’s program schedule, Americans are big fans of serial killers and shark movies. It’s therefore no surprise that somebody finally got around to combining the two (those shitty Discovery “Shark Week” docs don’t count). The result? Sean Byrne’s surprisingly entertaining Dangerous Animals.
Now you might think calling something “surprisingly entertaining” indicates bias on my part. And I admit, I am a shark movie aficionado. If it’s in theaters, or on one of the streaming outlets I steal subscribe to, I’ve seen it. And trust me when I say that most of them are … not good, ranging from the merely mediocre (Bait) to the truly execrable (Le Requin). When you finally stumble upon one that hits (The Shallows, The Reef, Open Water), it tends to stand out.
Byrne knows that one of the most effective shark movie strategies is not showing the shark all that much. Here, he uses a combination of night scenes (the better to disguise any iffy CGI) and gorgeous underwater photography to heighten the realism.
He also coaxes genuinely gripping performances from his leads. Harrison, best known to this point for Yellowstone, convinces as someone who’s had to live by her wits for a while, making Zephyr a fitting entry in the Final Girl pantheon.
And after unsuccessful attempts at leading man roles (Divergent, Terminator Genisys), it’s nice to see Courtney cutting loose and leaning into his weird scumbag stage (see also The Suicide Squad). Tucker, who famously survived a childhood shark attack, is like an anti-Quint, emerging from his near-death experience with a parasitic reverence for the aquatic predators. Fine, maybe he could’ve devoted his life to marine biology instead of filming them eating people. People deal with their trauma in different ways.
Byrne also knows, as with pretty much every “nature gone wild” movie made since the 1950s, that the most “dangerous animal” is man. To that end, the obvious point of reference here is not Jaws, but Silence of the Lambs. Tucker isn’t sewing a skin suit, but he does make fishing lures out of the hair of his victims. There’s even a “tuck” scene of sorts, with Australian flavors: Tucker’s drunk, and it’s set to “Evie” by Stevie Wright instead of “Goodbye Horses.”
There’s also a callback to another Courtney joint (Jack Reacher) that involves digits getting bitten off.
That said, it’s not *perfect*. Far be it from me to blame the victims from the opening scene, but Tucker’s boat is a bit janky looking to trust for a day cruise. You’d also think that a portion of one of Tucker’s many corpses would have washed up on the beach at some point.
And Zephyr, perhaps as befits her name, makes some questionable decisions (giving Book of Mormon-looking Moses a ride, surfing at night). To her credit, Harrison portrays her resourcefulness credibly, which — along with Byrne’s taut direction, Nick Lepard’s (!) lean script, and a Michael Yezerski score dripping with dread — turns Dangerous Animals into a summer surprise. Extra points for ending the movie in really the only way that makes sense, but those are almost immediately deducted for a boneheaded miscalculation in spear gun etiquette.
Dangerous Animals is in theaters today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
