Film review: Dangerous Animals

There is a refreshing familiarity in Sean Byrne’s Dangerous Animals, even if he tries to subvert the convention in a not very subtle way. Because Dangerous Animals is a shark picture where the shark isn’t a villain and a serial killer picture where the killing isn’t made by the killer. And yet it starts just like the genre demands, with the introduction of the threat via the sacrifice of two clueless teenagers in peril – in Jaws, they were venturing to a beach at night; in Dangerous Animals, they get on a boat with Jai Courtney.

Only after this can the film start with Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), an American tourist surfing her way through the Queensland coast when she meets the charming Moses (Josh Heuston). She initially dismisses him for being a real estate agent but melts over the fact he also surfs, and I’m guessing for his perfectly shaped jawline. After a night together, Zephyr leaves early in the morning to surf but bumps into Courtney’s Bruce Tucker – a shark experience company owner who moonlights as a serial killer for his own sick gratification. Zephyr is not like Bruce’s previous victims – she’s a fighter, a resilient survivor who endured hardships her whole life until this point. A crazy man and a bunch of sharks are nothing for her; this animal bites.

Dangerous Animals delivers what it sets out to do. There is no complicated subtext to unpack or deeper meaning to dwell on. Byrne and writer Nick Lepard reduce the plot to the bare essentials of entertainment. They introduce the characters quickly, add enough personality and backstory to relate with them, and then off we go to the open seas when Dangerous Animals turns into the lovechild of Jaws and Silence of the Lambs, complete with Courtney dancing half-naked not to Goodbye Horses but to Stevie Wright’s Evie. Zephyr spends most of the film trying to break the literal chains of her imprisonment as Moses investigates her disappearance.

Byrne and Lepard spend time with Tucker like Demme wanted to spend time with Buffalo Bill. There is not a lot of dramatic value to justify this but it does give Courtney more time because, at the end of the day, this is his film. Driven and unhinged, Dangerous Animals works because Courtney approaches the role with the right amount of threat and pulp. The whole point of Dangerous Animals is not new – man is the real dangerous animal. Yes, that’s not a new thing. The mayor of Amity is the real villain of Jaws and, like Tucker says in this, “it’s not the shark’s fault.” It’s the easiest take a creature film can make, but Byrne is not trying to reinvent the wheel or set the world on fire.

Eyes on the prize, like a shark circling a defenceless victim, Byrne and Lepard want to entertain and provide the guttural experience. Through and through, this is an enjoyable slice of Ozploitation that does not elevate its reason of being to something more memorable, thanks to the boring heavy-handedness of its protagonists. It has the same passion as 90s direct-to-VHS horror thriller titles: not as bloody and shocking as the real cult titles, but one to be respected. Byrne admitted he wanted to make a shark film because he had read somewhere that it’s the only subgenre that never lost money. To be fair, I have heard of less cynical reasons for making a film.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5
A straightforward twist on two established genres that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, even if the waters of this pond are just a little bit too shallow.