A madman who had a run-in with a shark as a child now feeds tourists to the creatures, until he meets his (human) match in a young American drifter.
Living in the UK, we get to watch shark movies from the safety of our drizzly bays and beaches; for now we don’t see many killer sharks round these parts, climate change / Great Whites developing a taste for a great cup of tea notwithstanding.
It means we’re watching them at one remove, which makes it a little more comfortable, though Dangerous Animals is anything but comfy.
I had been meaning to watch Dangerous Animals since its release last year. What prompted me now was viewing a screener for a low budget shark horror called Chum, starring Alice Eve, which is now out in the UK and also has a madman dangling his attractive young victims over shark invested waters. Dangerous Animals is by far the better film, a nasty and highly effective thriller about an all-too-human monster, where the sharks are the morally neutral weapon, not the antagonists. Tense, grimy, with a believably streetwise and self-reliant heroine, Dangerous Animals stands up well even against bigger budgeted shark fare.
Sharks have been dodging blame for every attack since Jaws: it’s their nature, they’re protecting their babies, they mistook us for a nice fatty seal, climate change, blah blah. I’m surprised no one has yet made a film of Viz magazine’s comic strip The Pathetic Sharks, to complete the big fishes’ repudiation of any responsibility whatsoever.
In Dangerous Animals they have to be tempted with human bait, and even then one massive Great White turns around and swims off, uninterested in being weaponised by a madman.
The madman in question is Tucker (Jai Courtney), the owner of a manky fishing boat apparently birthed by a malfunctioning 3D printer stuck on the “dystopia” setting – from which he operates a tourist business dropping cages of travellers into Australia’s shark-filled waters. It’s an exciting and beautiful world beneath the surface, and lulls the tourists into a false sense of security before he lowers them back in to the water in a harness to be devoured by the circling Great Whites and Bull sharks. He’s obsessed with his video camera, a way to preserve his atrocities for repeat watching but also giving him a barrier between himself and the reality of what he has done.
Someone should have watched 60 Minute Makeover
His victims are gap year students and travellers, young people whose families presumably won’t look for them for a while (as a plot device this has more holes than a crumpet, not least because nowadays every gap year kid who goes missing gets their own true crime podcast within six months, but never mind).
His mistake is to pick a victim he believes his equal – the rootless wanderer Zephyr (an excellent Hassie Harrison) – who also has no family and, he thinks, no one to look for her. He likens them both to the sharks he claims affinity with, but she is far more resourceful than him. Zephyr can react in an instant but also never stops thinking ahead; Tucker can only repeat his murderous pattern as if rewinding the videotapes he makes of his victims’ deaths. When something changes he is, pardon the pun, all at sea.
Harrison’s always watchful drifter, fuelled by a plausible backstory, is a worthy and believable opponent to Courtney’s mad-eyed killer. And Courtney makes a terrific villain: a threatening, menacing presence that never collapses into eye-rolling parody. From the off he sweats an unpredictability that leaves Tucker’s future victims unsettled, but, knowing they are in a vulnerable position, leaves them grasping at straws of normality to reassure themselves about him. It is their undoing.
Moses, dangling, unable to roll back the sea
Greg (Liam Greineke) and Heather (Ella Newton) meet at a local hostel and team up for a day with the sharks. After a successful dip in the cage they resurface laughing, only for Tucker to push Greg back into the sea to be eaten while kidnapping Heather for one of his shark murder videos later on. Back on land Zephyr is warily getting to know local boy Moses (Josh Heuston), who shares her love of surfing, though she leaves him in the early morning to surf alone. There she meets Tucker, who stuffs her into a board bag and takes her back to his boat, where she wakes up handcuffed to a metal bedstead next to Heather.
Heather is sweet but has already pretty much given up; Zephyr’s fightback is fuelled by the realistic watchfulness and ability to maximise every sliver of potential luck, realistic life skills for someone who has always navigated the worst of life alone. Moses, who never gives up on searching for Zephyr, is a diligent foil for her, good with his fists but without her life-honed smarts. He is also her saviour, if not in the way you’d expect.
Sean Byrne directs with propulsive intensity on this dangerously moated prison, while Nick Lepard’s script carries no extraneous flab.
There are some inconsistencies which as a traditional British pedant I am duty-bound raise: Heather is meant to be an English girl on a gap year but talks of law school and “juvie”, neither of which are typical Britspeak. But as criticisms these are small fry (sorry). And with Dangerous Animals coming in at well under two hours at no point will you be waiting for the fin-ish. (Sorry x 2)
Read my Dangerous Animals plot recap and ending article, here.
Watch the Dangerous Animals trailer now: