20 May REVIEW – ‘Dangerous Animals’ is a lean, nasty survival thriller with a twisted sense of humour
Sometimes a movie knows exactly what it is, and Dangerous Animals is precisely that kind of film. From the moment it sinks its teeth into you, this sun-drenched, salt-streaked nightmare makes no apologies for what it’s serving up. It’s a lean, nasty survival thriller with a twisted sense of humour, a villain you’ll begrudgingly love to hate, and more blood in the water than a slaughterhouse drain.
It’s also surprisingly stylish and frequently stomach-churning, a B-movie shocker wrapped in A24 gloss. Directed with panache by Sean Byrne, Dangerous Animals marries the primal horror of man-versus-nature with the even more terrifying realisation that sometimes the most dangerous animals aren’t swimming beneath you, but steering the boat. It’s Jaws meets Wolf Creek, and the result is deeply satisfying.
This is the kind of film that wears its grindhouse heart on its sleeve while also trying to tap into something a little more psychological, a little more thematic, even if it doesn’t always hit the mark. At its best, it’s powered by a sick charisma that drips from Jai Courtney like seawater off a hook, and it’s hard not to admire the way the film positions him as both showman and sadist. The film also gives Hassie Harrison a worthy breakout role, but it’s Courtney who dominates every frame he’s in. The film is silly, mean, and mean-spirited, and often deeply unpleasant, but that’s part of what makes it work. Like a great white that smells blood in the water, it goes for the jugular and doesn’t look back.
The film opens with backpackers Heather (Ella Newton) and Greg (Liam Greinke) arriving for a shark diving experience with the enigmatic Tucker, played with unsettling magnetism by Courtney. He runs Tucker’s Experience, a ramshackle shark diving tour on Australia’s tourist hot spot, the Gold Coast, offering thrill-seekers a close-up glimpse of one of nature’s deadliest creatures. Greg is sceptical, Heather more wary, but Tucker charms them both into boarding his boat and entering his shark cage.
Their experience is intimate, eerie, and oddly captivating, thanks to the way Byrne and cinematographer Shelley Farthing-Dawe shoot the water like it’s a living, breathing thing. But soon, the real purpose of Tucker’s tour becomes gruesomely apparent. It’s a bold and shocking opening that sets the tone for what’s to come. The real story, however, kicks off when we meet Zephyr (Harrison), a drifter with a surfboard and a van who prefers the solace of the waves to the complications of emotional connection.
After a fleeting and flirtatious night with charming real estate agent Moses (Josh Heuston), Zephyr hits the road again, yearning for freedom and space. But fate has other plans, and a chance encounter with Tucker leads to her capture. She awakens on his boat, groggy and restrained. Tucker, cheery and unnerving in equal measure, makes his intentions clear without ever needing to raise his voice. As he prepares another feeding session for his beloved sharks, Zephyr must summon every ounce of strength, smarts, and instinct she has to survive.
Courtney is the not-so-secret weapon here, and what he’s doing in this movie is something truly special. He’s always been a presence in Hollywood, usually cast in stoic or forgettable roles, but this is the kind of turn that makes you re-evaluate everything you thought you knew about an actor. As Tucker, he’s equal parts predator and peacock, a sadistic killer who records his murders like they’re performance art and dances around his boat in a kimono with a wine bottle in hand.
He’s grotesque, hilarious, magnetic, and utterly vile, often all at once; something only someone as fully committed as Courtney could pull off. There’s something genuinely unnerving about the way he can pivot from small talk to slaughter, and Byrne gives Courtney the space to really sink into this monster. Tucker is not just the villain; he’s the movie’s chaotic engine, and the film is at its best when it’s orbiting him.
What’s so effective about Courtney’s performance is that he never plays Tucker as overtly unhinged. Instead, he’s composed, calculating, and often weirdly charming. There’s a rhythm to his madness, a rehearsed sense of theatre to everything he does. Whether he’s casually chewing food while a video of someone’s death plays in the background or pontificating about the beauty of sharks as he prepares another victim, he feels like a character who could believably exist just outside the boundaries of polite society. It’s not an easy performance to pull off, but Courtney attacks it with the kind of energy that suggests he’s been waiting years for this kind of role.
Harrison, meanwhile, is no slouch as Zephyr. She brings a grounded, no-nonsense energy to a character who could have easily been written as little more than a damsel. Zephyr is jaded, yes, but also resourceful, defiant, and ultimately quite compelling to root for. Harrison sells both the physicality of the role and the emotional toll that comes with it. Her best scenes are the ones where she’s observing, calculating, looking for a sliver of hope in the hopeless. When the violence escalates, and she’s forced to fight back, she brings a fierce believability to the role that makes the survival aspect of the film genuinely thrilling, especially in one particularly grisly moment that will have you wincing in your seat.
The film’s pacing is tight, with most of the action confined to Tucker’s boat and the vast, isolating ocean around it. Byrne knows how to build dread, and the ocean is presented not as a place of beauty but as a looming, inescapable void. The scenes involving the sharks are used sparingly but effectively, and when they do arrive, they’re intense, gnarly, and hard to watch. There’s a moment involving a live feeding that pushes the audience right to the edge, and it’s a credit to Byrne’s direction that these moments don’t feel gratuitous. They’re horrifying, yes, but also serve to reinforce the stakes of the narrative.
That said, there’s no denying that the film is bleak. Dangerous Animals lives up to its title in ways that are both literal and thematic. There’s a nihilistic streak running through the movie, and while it adds to the horror, it also leaves you feeling a little hollow. The film flirts with the idea of meaning through trauma, connection, and self-worth, but rarely digs deeper than surface level. Zephyr’s backstory is sketched out enough to make her sympathetic, but not enough to fully earn the film’s final moments. And while Moses offers some brief flashes of hope or humanity, his subplot feels underdeveloped, especially once the film kicks into survival mode.
The script also occasionally stumbles when it leans into exposition. Tucker is fascinating because of what we don’t know about him. The film is at its most unnerving when we’re simply watching him operate, but there are moments where the script tries to ascribe too much logic or psychology to his behaviour. It doesn’t need to. He’s far more effective as a force of chaos, and Courtney’s performance is strong enough to suggest a rich inner life without having to spell it all out.
Still, these are relatively minor complaints in what is otherwise a gripping, gory, and strangely fun thriller. The film’s visual style deserves credit, too. Farthing-Dawe captures the Australian coast with a mixture of awe and unease. The sun bleaches everything, the water sparkles with menace, and the inside of Tucker’s boat is claustrophobic and grimy, a floating prison with no escape. The film also makes strong use of sound, particularly the contrast between the quiet isolation of the open sea and the chaotic splashes of feeding time. There’s a queasy tension baked into the film’s DNA, and Byrne knows just how to stretch it.
The violence in Dangerous Animals is unflinching and often gruesome. There are at least three set pieces that will test the stomachs of even seasoned horror fans. Bodies are torn apart by sharks, limbs fly in unexpected directions, and blood seeps into the water like ink in a glass. But what makes these moments effective is not just the gore but also the context. Byrne shoots them not as spectacle but as horror, and they always feel grounded in the characters’ desperation. You wince not because the effects are flashy, but because the film earns the horror.
There’s also something oddly lyrical about the film’s approach to death. Tucker speaks about sharks with reverence, likening their feeding to some kind of primal ritual. In his warped mind, he’s not just killing, he’s performing a service. That adds a disturbing spiritual layer to the proceedings, and while the film never fully leans into this idea, it’s there in the margins, lingering like a bad taste. It’s enough to give the film a distinctive personality, even if it never quite elevates itself beyond genre thrills.
The final act delivers the kind of bloody payoff the film has been building toward, and while some of the beats are predictable, Byrne directs them with enough energy and tension to keep you gripped. There’s a final confrontation that’s satisfyingly nasty, especially after the torment you’ve witnessed for 90-odd minutes. It’s not a happy movie, and it doesn’t try to be. But it does stick the landing.
Dangerous Animals is the kind of film that thrives on discomfort. It wants to trap you on that boat with Zephyr, make you feel the sunburn, the dehydration, the hopelessness. It wants you to squirm, not just from the gore but from the psychological sadism of it all. That might not be for everyone, but for horror fans who like their thrills soaked in saltwater and dread, this one delivers. The film has little interest in subtlety, but as a tight, brutal, and unrelenting ride, it more than earns its place as an ingenious twist on the well-worn shark-horror genre. With a little more depth, it could’ve been great. As it stands, it’s just damn good. And that’s more than enough.
Distributor: Kismet Movies
Cast: Hassie Harrison, Josh Heuston, Rob Carlton, Ella Newton, Liam Greinke, Jai Courtney
Director: Sean Byrne
Producers: Troy Lum, Andrew Mason, Pete Shilaimon, Mickey Liddell, Chris Ferguson, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
Screenplay: Nick Lepard
Cinematography: Shelley Farthing-Dawe
Production Design: Pete Baxter
Costume Design: Marion Boyce
Editor: Kasra Rassoulzadegan
Music: Michael Yezerski
Running Time: 98 minutes
Release Date: 12th June 2025 (Australia)