The wildly entertaining Dangerous Animals proves that Australian genre director Sean Byrne should get a lot more work than he does. After his cult classic debut feature The Loved Ones made big waves in 2009 and his eerie, underrated follow-up The Devil’s Candy in 2015 showcased some top notch filmmaking, one might’ve expected big things from Byrne. But even though Dangerous Animals is only his third film overall (also the first one he didn’t write himself) and it’s coming a full decade after his last feature, the overall quality of this sharks, surfers, and serial killers romp ensures that Byrne’s name will continue to be a memorable one behind the camera.
Surfer and carb aficionado Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is a rolling stone, rambling around Queensland’s Gold Coast region, living out of the back of her vintage van, searching for big waves and not wanting to make any lasting attachments. After sneaking away from a one-night stand meet cute with a kindly local real estate guy and fellow surfer named Moses (Josh Heuston), Zephyr sets out early to catch some waves. But before she can hit the water, she’s assaulted and captured by a madman named Tucker (Jai Courtney), who runs a pleasure cruise for tourists who want to swim with the sharks. After surviving a shark attack as a child, Tucker has become twisted, using his day job and boat as a cover for capturing helpless rubes, feeding them to the sharks, videotaping the ensuing carnage, and watching back the footage at his leisure. While a suspicious Moses tries to piece together his crush’s disappearance back on the mainland, Zephyr uses her survival skills to outwit and escape Tucker’s clutches before she becomes just more chum for his sick fetish.
The script from Nick Lepard mashes up slasher, hostage, and animal attack tropes into an intoxicating blend that makes each of those elements feel refreshing and revitalized. The elements are basic: a strong and likeable heroine, an unhinged villain, and a surprisingly effective Hitchcockian subplot where someone frantically searches for a lost love. But each of those individual pieces come together under a number of different genre banners at the same time. Dangerous Animals is simultaneously a cat and mouse thriller, a Saw styled chiller where someone tries to escape from captivity, a psychologically loaded serial killer movie, a character study that keeps adding layers as it goes, and a brutally black comedy built around a core premise that’s more than a little batty. Nothing competes for time, and Byrne and Lepard maintain a consistent tone throughout.
It’s also not a thematically empty horror movie coasting by on shocks and swerves alone. Through its diametrically opposed heroine and villain (both of whom have suffered traumas in their lives), Dangerous Animals looks at the light and dark side of living a live of isolation, freedom, and solitude. Despite her faults and sometimes brusque nature, Zephyr seems to have turned out okay living a vagabond life. Tucker, who sees some of himself in his recent capture, has become a complete nutter who only attaches himself to others in a bid to dispose of them quickly. In some ways, these are the same people, but no one dies when Zephyr leaves someone in their past. It’s a well done take on the “killer meets their match” scenario. Tucker’s proclivity for videotaping and rewatching his kills also subtextually speaks to the way misogyny can be fuelled by an obsession with violent images and memories, and how destroying the baddie’s camera could be the key to unravelling his entire operation.
Harrison’s performance in the lead is dramatically and physically impressive, displaying a willingness to do whatever it takes to make the viewer root for her or squirm uncomfortably in their seats. For his part, Heuston makes the most of what could’ve been a throw away role solely designed to move the plot along by turning his likeable love interest into a three dimensional human being heading into the film’s latter stages. But Dangerous Animals belongs to Courtney, who gives the best performance in what has thus far been an underrated career on screen. With the exception of a malicious grin and demeanour that earns a fair number of knowing, anxious chuckles from the audience and an impromptu drunken dance sequence where Tucker lurches around in his skivvies and a bathrobe, Courtney plays his part with pathological menace. Tucker is kind of a dope, but Courtney puts in a turn that’s much more in line with the likes of Robert De Niro in Cape Fear or Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. There’s a smoothness and calm, jovial cunning when Tucker is first met, and he only appears unsettling and unhinged when alone with someone and about to strike. Courtney’s killer is a horror movie icon for the ages.
In terms of style, Dangerous Animals is a triumph for a movie that largely takes place aboard a rusting boat. With an exceptional grasp of lighting and composition, Bryne and his collaborators make the horror crystal clear, instead of taking the easier route to make things as dingy and dark as possible. As with his other efforts, Byrne uses the film’s surprisingly catchy musical score (provided by Devil’s Candy composer Michael Yezerski) to punctuate the action rather than drown it out. But Byrne’s best contribution to Dangerous Animals is an assured sense of pacing that keeps the action thrilling and the viewer guessing. Every time the viewer thinks that Dangerous Animals has gone as far as it can, Byrne comes up with something new to keep the ball rolling, building to a grand finale that doesn’t disappoint in terms of the sheer number of momentum swings and near misses. And few people have a better grasp on the brutality of the horror genre than Byrne. If something looks painful to a character, you better believe Byrne is going to lean into those feelings, prolong them, and find a way to keep escalating from there.
Really the worst thing about Dangerous Animals are the CGI sharks, which vary in quality from “barely passable” to “shouldn’t have been used.” That’s a major subtraction for a film built around a serial killer who uses sharks as their preferred weapon of choice, but Byrne works around the budgetary shortcomings of the project nicely by only bringing the creatures out when absolutely needed. If there had been a bigger role for the sharks, maybe this would rate a bit lower. Thankfully, Courtney bites off enough of the scenery to make one almost forget about the aquatic (and here, sympathetic) creatures, and Byrne’s relentless momentum make Dangerous Animals a gory, frightening, and wholly enjoyable “pleasure” cruise.
Dangerous Animals opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, June 6, 2025.
