Back in shark-laden waters, 'Dangerous Animals' is a horror film with tired blood
Sean Byrne knows how to show an audience a bad time. Sixteen years ago, the Australian filmmaker launched onto the scene with 'The Loved Ones,' his proudly grisly debut about a misfit teenager who gets gruesome revenge on the boy who refused to go to prom with her. Part expert torture porn, part exploration of adolescent romantic anxieties, the film was an instant midnight-madness cult item that took Byrne six years to follow up.
When he did, he went in a different tonal direction with 'The Devil's Candy,' a surprisingly emotional psychological thriller about a heavy-metal-loving painter who moves his family to a beautifully rustic home, only to lose his mind. Working in recognizable horror subgenres, Byrne entices you with a familiar premise and then slowly teases apart the tropes, leaving you unsettled but also invigorated by his inventiveness.
It has now been a decade since that distinctive riff on 'The Shining,' and for Byrne's third feature, he once again pillages from indelible sources. 'Dangerous Animals' draws from both the serial-killer thriller and Hollywood's penchant for survival stories about hungry sharks feasting on human flesh. But unlike in the past, Byrne's new movie never waylays you with a surprise narrative wrinkle or unexpected thematic depth. He hasn't lost his knack for generating bad vibes, but this time he hasn't brought anything else to the party.
The movie stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, a solitary surfer who explains in on-the-nose dialogue that she prefers the danger of open water to the unhappiness of life on land. An American in Australia who grew up in foster homes and who lives in a beat-up old van, Zephyr encounters Moses (Josh Heuston), a straitlaced nice guy whom she hooks up with. Not that she wants him developing feelings for her: She takes off in the middle of the night so she can catch some waves. Unfortunately, Zephyr is the one who gets caught — by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a deceptively gregarious boat captain who kidnaps her. Next thing she knows, she's chained up inside his vessel out at sea, alongside another female victim, Heather (Ella Newton).
Read more: The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles
Like many a movie serial killer, Tucker isn't just interested in murdering his prey — he wants to make something artistic out of his butchery. And so he ties Heather to a crane and dangles her in the water like a giant lure, pulling out a camcorder to record her final moments as sharks devour her. Watching his victims struggle to stay alive is cinema to this twisted soul and Zephyr will be his next unwitting protagonist.
Working from a script by visual artist Nick Lepard, Byrne (who wrote his two previous features) digs into the story's B-movie appeal. Tucker may use old-fashioned technology to record his kills, but 'Dangerous Animals' is set in the present, even if its trashy, drive-in essence would have made it better suited to come out 50 years ago as counterprogramming to "Jaws." With Zephyr's tough-girl demeanor and Tucker's creepy vibe, Byrne knowingly plays into genre clichés, setting up the inevitable showdown between the beauty and the beast.
But despite that juicy setup, 'Dangerous Animals' is a disappointingly straightforward and ultimately underwhelming horror movie, offering little of the grim poetry of Byrne's previous work and far too much of the narrative predictability that in the past he astutely sidestepped. There are still subversive ideas — for one thing, this is a shark film with precious few sharks — but Byrne's sneaky smarts have largely abandoned him. Rather than transcending expectations, 'Dangerous Animals' surrenders to them.
One can't fault Harrison, whose Zephyr spends much of the movie in a battle of wills with her captor. Because 'Dangerous Animals' limits the amount of sharks we see, digitally inserting footage of the deadly creatures into scenes, the story's central tension comes from Zephyr trying to free herself or get help before Tucker prepares his next nautical snuff film. Harrison projects a ferocious determination that's paired with an intense loathing for this condescending, demented misogynist. It's bad enough that Tucker wants to murder her — beforehand, he wants to bore her with shark trivia, dully advocating for these misunderstood animals. It's an underdeveloped joke: 'Dangerous Animals' is a nightmare about meeting the mansplainer from hell.
Alas, Courtney's conception of the film's true dangerous animal is where the story truly runs aground. The actor's handsome, vaguely blank countenance is meant to suggest a burly, hunky everyman — the sort of person you'd never suspect or look twice at, which makes Tucker well-positioned to leave a trail of corpses in his path. But neither Byrne nor Courtney entirely gets their arms around this conventionally unhinged horror villain. 'Dangerous Animals' overly underlines its point that we shouldn't be afraid of sharks — it's the Tuckers who ought to keep us up at night — but Courtney never captures the unfathomable malice beneath the facial scruff. We root for Zephyr to escape Tucker's clutches not because he's evil but because he's a bit of a stiff.
Even with those deficiencies, the film boasts a level of craft that keeps the story fleet, with Byrne relying on the dependable tension of a victim trapped at sea with her pursuer, sharks waiting in the waters surrounding her. Michael Yezerski's winkingly emphatic score juices every scare as the gore keeps ratcheting up — particularly during a moment when Zephyr finds an unexpected way to break out of handcuffs.
But Byrne can't redeem the script's boneheaded plot twists, nor can he elevate the most potentially intriguing idea at its core. As Tucker peers into his viewfinder, getting off on his victims' screams as sharks sink their jaws into them, 'Dangerous Animals' hints at the fixation horror directors such as Byrne have for presenting us with unspeakable terrors, insisting we love the bloodshed as much as they do. Tucker tries to convince Zephyr that they're not all that different — they're both sharks, you see — but in truth, Byrne may be suggesting an uncomfortable kinship with his serial killer. But instead of provocatively pursuing that unholy bond, the director only finds chum.
Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
18 hours ago
- Forbes
Jai Courtney On ‘Dangerous Animals' And Missing Out On ‘Jack Reacher'
Jai Courtney attends the Los Angeles premiere of 'Dangerous Animals' at the Egyptian theatre in ... More Hollywood, California. If Dangerous Animals actor Jai Courtney has learned anything in his career, it's never to let a character's death stand in the way of a potential franchise. "I'll get quoted, so I've got to be careful here because I've put my foot in it in the past when it comes to characters returning," the Australian says with a laugh. "As a great director once told me, in this kind of world, you can break all the rules that you establish. Sequels, prequels, who knows? The important thing is that I had fun with this character. If someone wants to do it again, I'm fu**king there." The American-Australian survival horror film sees Courtney play Tucker, a shark-obsessed serial killer who kidnaps people, holds them captive on his boat, and then feeds them to the deadly predators, videotaping their gory demises. However, he meets his match when he abducts a rebellious surfer called Zephyr, played by Yellowstone's Hassie Harrison. R-rated Dangerous Animals lands exclusively in theaters on Friday, June 6, 2025. While Tucker appears to be out of the picture, his reign of terror might not be over. "He could be part of a larger group of psychos," the actor muses. "It could be the beginning of a long-running series where we explore one tape in every episode. The sky's the limit." Courtney's killer is the latest solid entry in a lineage of heinous killers in Australian horror and is arguably the best since John Jarratt's Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek. However, they're different beasts. "There are easy comparisons to make in that you're dealing with an Aussie serial killer and characters that fall into that web. That's where, thematically, the bad marriage ends," Courtney muses. "I guess there's some familiar territory between the two. Wolf Creek made a splash when it was released, and I think it opened up a world that people were perhaps aware of, but it was familiar and terrifying. It was enough to scare people from driving across the Nullarbor Plain in Australia or wherever it is. Dangerous Animals will probably have a similar impact. Wolf Creek has achieved contemporary iconic status, so if people enjoy this enough to group it in with that in years to come, that's something to be proud of." Similar to British bad guys in movies, an Aussie villain has a certain quality that sets them apart from American psychopaths. The Suicide Squad and Terminator Genisys actor acknowledges this and leans into it but can't quite put his finger on what the difference is. "I feel like it's something that we did just breaks the mold," he says. "When you're looking at it through a lens from America, there's a certain level of intrigue around it. We are countries with a rich history that isn't necessarily widely understood in this part of the world. Australia is synonymous with all kinds of dangerous, creepy crawlies." "The number of times I speak to someone, and they're like, 'I always wanted to go to Australia, but the flights are too long, and doesn't everything they want to kill you?' Maybe something about Dangerous Animals leans into that a little further than people want it to, but it's taking something that people want to know, and it's just far enough away from their reality that it elevates the threat." Jai Courtney in 'Dangerous Animals.' Dangerous Animals is only the third movie from director Sean Byrne, and it's the first he has filmed that he didn't write. Something that appealed to Courtney was the fact the filmmaker likes to "mash stuff up" when it comes to genre movies and "has an attachment to certain themes." "He's very musical," the actor explains. "He has an enormous appreciation for needle drops within things. I liked his work. I saw The Loved Ones when it was released years ago, and then I watched The Devil's Candy in reference to meeting him and discussing this, and I think he's an adventurous filmmaker. He really understands story, temperature, and volume when it comes to this genre. It's not a space I've played in before, so to work with someone who gets that was comforting; I had to lean on him for a lot of that because style changes when you're dealing with all the elements that will feed into the atmosphere you're going to build when you watch a movie, particularly in this world." "I urge people to see this in a cinema because our sound design is so huge. The experience of being out on the water, with all that industrial material clanging and banging, adds up to a visceral experience and the threat we're dealing with. You've got to adapt to a little bit of that when you're when you're performing, and it's hard to do. Having someone in the driver's seat who you know has confidence in knowing when to dial things up or down was really beneficial. It was a story he wanted to tell. Sean is such a sweetheart and is so easy to work with and collaborate with. It was also an element of coming into this and saying, 'Let me do what I want to do with it.' He's prescriptive in some ways and also very trusting. He knew I had an understanding of Tucker, even though it wasn't territory I'd ever played in before. There was something that I felt was necessary for this to work, and he allowed me to do that." A great example of that is a scene where Tucker, slightly drunk and high on a cocktail of mayhem and toxic masculinity, dances in his underwear to classic rock. There's a sexual vibe to the scene that gives off strong Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs and was a sequence created specifically for Courtney. "Sean told me the other night that apparently they wrote that in to send me the script. I don't recall the exact quote, but Troy Lum, one of our producers, mentioned that actors enjoy having a moment where they're behind the curtain. They were trying to find a beat that felt completely self-indulgent yet distinct from the performance. Tucker is a very performative character with everyone, and he's this guy who loves the sound of his own voice. I think the dance intended to give him space to have a party on his own. We don't see a lot of that because we're with him and another character for most of the movie in some way or another. It was out of my comfort zone and completely unrehearsed and unchoreographed. It was just me, Shelley Farthing-Dawe, our director of photography and the camera operator. He got in there handheld, in that sort of galley in Tucker's kitchen, and he's having a little party. We just went for it. We cranked up the old Aussie anthem, Evie by Stevie Wright, and blasted it twice in a row, and that was that. We all went home." Jai Courtney in 'Dangerous Animals.' Next on Courtney's schedule after Dangerous Animals is War Machine, which he also shot in his native Australia. Not much is known about Netflix's science fiction action film, in which he co-stars with, among others, Alan Ritchson, best known for his titular lead role in Prime Video's hit Jack Reacher TV show. Courtney, of course, starred in the 2012 Jack Reacher movie headlined by Tom Cruise and had his eye on a return to the Reacherverse via the small screen. "I've seen the show, and I remember when that was casting, I was like, 'Wait, I'm big enough to play Jack Reacher,' and they were like, 'No, that's too close to home,' which was a bummer at the time," he laughs. "I never got to look in." "Alan's great in that, and he's great in War Machine. I admire that dude and what he's doing. It's weirdly cool to see big, burly blokes getting roles because there was such a fear for a while. I know we've always had iconic action stars with certain physiques, but as someone who's not small, it's nice to see dudes in dramatic roles who aren't getting pigeonholed so much. He's getting a chance to do that with a lot of the work he's setting up, so props to him," the Dangerous Animals actor concludes. "I can't wait to see how that movie does."
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
Back in shark-laden waters, 'Dangerous Animals' is a horror film with tired blood
Sean Byrne knows how to show an audience a bad time. Sixteen years ago, the Australian filmmaker launched onto the scene with 'The Loved Ones,' his proudly grisly debut about a misfit teenager who gets gruesome revenge on the boy who refused to go to prom with her. Part expert torture porn, part exploration of adolescent romantic anxieties, the film was an instant midnight-madness cult item that took Byrne six years to follow up. When he did, he went in a different tonal direction with 'The Devil's Candy,' a surprisingly emotional psychological thriller about a heavy-metal-loving painter who moves his family to a beautifully rustic home, only to lose his mind. Working in recognizable horror subgenres, Byrne entices you with a familiar premise and then slowly teases apart the tropes, leaving you unsettled but also invigorated by his inventiveness. It has now been a decade since that distinctive riff on 'The Shining,' and for Byrne's third feature, he once again pillages from indelible sources. 'Dangerous Animals' draws from both the serial-killer thriller and Hollywood's penchant for survival stories about hungry sharks feasting on human flesh. But unlike in the past, Byrne's new movie never waylays you with a surprise narrative wrinkle or unexpected thematic depth. He hasn't lost his knack for generating bad vibes, but this time he hasn't brought anything else to the party. The movie stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, a solitary surfer who explains in on-the-nose dialogue that she prefers the danger of open water to the unhappiness of life on land. An American in Australia who grew up in foster homes and who lives in a beat-up old van, Zephyr encounters Moses (Josh Heuston), a straitlaced nice guy whom she hooks up with. Not that she wants him developing feelings for her: She takes off in the middle of the night so she can catch some waves. Unfortunately, Zephyr is the one who gets caught — by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a deceptively gregarious boat captain who kidnaps her. Next thing she knows, she's chained up inside his vessel out at sea, alongside another female victim, Heather (Ella Newton). Read more: The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles Like many a movie serial killer, Tucker isn't just interested in murdering his prey — he wants to make something artistic out of his butchery. And so he ties Heather to a crane and dangles her in the water like a giant lure, pulling out a camcorder to record her final moments as sharks devour her. Watching his victims struggle to stay alive is cinema to this twisted soul and Zephyr will be his next unwitting protagonist. Working from a script by visual artist Nick Lepard, Byrne (who wrote his two previous features) digs into the story's B-movie appeal. Tucker may use old-fashioned technology to record his kills, but 'Dangerous Animals' is set in the present, even if its trashy, drive-in essence would have made it better suited to come out 50 years ago as counterprogramming to "Jaws." With Zephyr's tough-girl demeanor and Tucker's creepy vibe, Byrne knowingly plays into genre clichés, setting up the inevitable showdown between the beauty and the beast. But despite that juicy setup, 'Dangerous Animals' is a disappointingly straightforward and ultimately underwhelming horror movie, offering little of the grim poetry of Byrne's previous work and far too much of the narrative predictability that in the past he astutely sidestepped. There are still subversive ideas — for one thing, this is a shark film with precious few sharks — but Byrne's sneaky smarts have largely abandoned him. Rather than transcending expectations, 'Dangerous Animals' surrenders to them. One can't fault Harrison, whose Zephyr spends much of the movie in a battle of wills with her captor. Because 'Dangerous Animals' limits the amount of sharks we see, digitally inserting footage of the deadly creatures into scenes, the story's central tension comes from Zephyr trying to free herself or get help before Tucker prepares his next nautical snuff film. Harrison projects a ferocious determination that's paired with an intense loathing for this condescending, demented misogynist. It's bad enough that Tucker wants to murder her — beforehand, he wants to bore her with shark trivia, dully advocating for these misunderstood animals. It's an underdeveloped joke: 'Dangerous Animals' is a nightmare about meeting the mansplainer from hell. Alas, Courtney's conception of the film's true dangerous animal is where the story truly runs aground. The actor's handsome, vaguely blank countenance is meant to suggest a burly, hunky everyman — the sort of person you'd never suspect or look twice at, which makes Tucker well-positioned to leave a trail of corpses in his path. But neither Byrne nor Courtney entirely gets their arms around this conventionally unhinged horror villain. 'Dangerous Animals' overly underlines its point that we shouldn't be afraid of sharks — it's the Tuckers who ought to keep us up at night — but Courtney never captures the unfathomable malice beneath the facial scruff. We root for Zephyr to escape Tucker's clutches not because he's evil but because he's a bit of a stiff. Even with those deficiencies, the film boasts a level of craft that keeps the story fleet, with Byrne relying on the dependable tension of a victim trapped at sea with her pursuer, sharks waiting in the waters surrounding her. Michael Yezerski's winkingly emphatic score juices every scare as the gore keeps ratcheting up — particularly during a moment when Zephyr finds an unexpected way to break out of handcuffs. But Byrne can't redeem the script's boneheaded plot twists, nor can he elevate the most potentially intriguing idea at its core. As Tucker peers into his viewfinder, getting off on his victims' screams as sharks sink their jaws into them, 'Dangerous Animals' hints at the fixation horror directors such as Byrne have for presenting us with unspeakable terrors, insisting we love the bloodshed as much as they do. Tucker tries to convince Zephyr that they're not all that different — they're both sharks, you see — but in truth, Byrne may be suggesting an uncomfortable kinship with his serial killer. But instead of provocatively pursuing that unholy bond, the director only finds chum. Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
Back in shark-laden waters, ‘Dangerous Animals' is a horror film with tired blood
Sean Byrne knows how to show an audience a bad time. Sixteen years ago, the Australian filmmaker launched onto the scene with 'The Loved Ones,' his proudly grisly debut about a misfit teenager who gets gruesome revenge on the boy who refused to go to prom with her. Part expert torture porn, part exploration of adolescent romantic anxieties, the film was an instant midnight-madness cult item that took Byrne six years to follow up. When he did, he went in a different tonal direction with 'The Devil's Candy,' a surprisingly emotional psychological thriller about a heavy-metal-loving painter who moves his family to a beautifully rustic home, only to lose his mind. Working in recognizable horror subgenres, Byrne entices you with a familiar premise and then slowly teases apart the tropes, leaving you unsettled but also invigorated by his inventiveness. It has now been a decade since that distinctive riff on 'The Shining,' and for Byrne's third feature, he once again pillages from indelible sources. 'Dangerous Animals' draws from both the serial-killer thriller and Hollywood's penchant for survival stories about hungry sharks feasting on human flesh. But unlike in the past, Byrne's new movie never waylays you with a surprise narrative wrinkle or unexpected thematic depth. He hasn't lost his knack for generating bad vibes, but this time he hasn't brought anything else to the party. The movie stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, a solitary surfer who explains in on-the-nose dialogue that she prefers the danger of open water to the unhappiness of life on land. An American in Australia who grew up in foster homes and who lives in a beat-up old van, Zephyr encounters Moses (Josh Heuston), a straitlaced nice guy whom she hooks up with. Not that she wants him developing feelings for her: She takes off in the middle of the night so she can catch some waves. Unfortunately, Zephyr is the one who gets caught — by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a deceptively gregarious boat captain who kidnaps her. Next thing she knows, she's chained up inside his vessel out at sea, alongside another female victim, Heather (Ella Newton). Like many a movie serial killer, Tucker isn't just interested in murdering his prey — he wants to make something artistic out of his butchery. And so he ties Heather to a crane and dangles her in the water like a giant lure, pulling out a camcorder to record her final moments as sharks devour her. Watching his victims struggle to stay alive is cinema to this twisted soul and Zephyr will be his next unwitting protagonist. Working from a script by visual artist Nick Lepard, Byrne (who wrote his two previous features) digs into the story's B-movie appeal. Tucker may use old-fashioned technology to record his kills, but 'Dangerous Animals' is set in the present, even if its trashy, drive-in essence would have made it better suited to come out 50 years ago as counterprogramming to 'Jaws.' With Zephyr's tough-girl demeanor and Tucker's creepy vibe, Byrne knowingly plays into genre clichés, setting up the inevitable showdown between the beauty and the beast. But despite that juicy setup, 'Dangerous Animals' is a disappointingly straightforward and ultimately underwhelming horror movie, offering little of the grim poetry of Byrne's previous work and far too much of the narrative predictability that in the past he astutely sidestepped. There are still subversive ideas — for one thing, this is a shark film with precious few sharks — but Byrne's sneaky smarts have largely abandoned him. Rather than transcending expectations, 'Dangerous Animals' surrenders to them. One can't fault Harrison, whose Zephyr spends much of the movie in a battle of wills with her captor. Because 'Dangerous Animals' limits the amount of sharks we see, digitally inserting footage of the deadly creatures into scenes, the story's central tension comes from Zephyr trying to free herself or get help before Tucker prepares his next nautical snuff film. Harrison projects a ferocious determination that's paired with an intense loathing for this condescending, demented misogynist. It's bad enough that Tucker wants to murder her — beforehand, he wants to bore her with shark trivia, dully advocating for these misunderstood animals. It's an underdeveloped joke: 'Dangerous Animals' is a nightmare about meeting the mansplainer from hell. Alas, Courtney's conception of the film's true dangerous animal is where the story truly runs aground. The actor's handsome, vaguely blank countenance is meant to suggest a burly, hunky everyman — the sort of person you'd never suspect or look twice at, which makes Tucker well-positioned to leave a trail of corpses in his path. But neither Byrne nor Courtney entirely gets their arms around this conventionally unhinged horror villain. 'Dangerous Animals' overly underlines its point that we shouldn't be afraid of sharks — it's the Tuckers who ought to keep us up at night — but Courtney never captures the unfathomable malice beneath the facial scruff. We root for Zephyr to escape Tucker's clutches not because he's evil but because he's a bit of a stiff. Even with those deficiencies, the film boasts a level of craft that keeps the story fleet, with Byrne relying on the dependable tension of a victim trapped at sea with her pursuer, sharks waiting in the waters surrounding her. Michael Yezerski's winkingly emphatic score juices every scare as the gore keeps ratcheting up — particularly during a moment when Zephyr finds an unexpected way to break out of handcuffs. But Byrne can't redeem the script's boneheaded plot twists, nor can he elevate the most potentially intriguing idea at its core. As Tucker peers into his viewfinder, getting off on his victims' screams as sharks sink their jaws into them, 'Dangerous Animals' hints at the fixation horror directors such as Byrne have for presenting us with unspeakable terrors, insisting we love the bloodshed as much as they do. Tucker tries to convince Zephyr that they're not all that different — they're both sharks, you see — but in truth, Byrne may be suggesting an uncomfortable kinship with his serial killer. But instead of provocatively pursuing that unholy bond, the director only finds chum.
