‘Do you understand what happens to the ecosystem if you remove the shark?‘
Cinema has been obsessed with sharks since Spielberg released Jaws into an unsuspecting world in 1975. Since then we’ve had every kind of shark-based movie imaginable. Sharks in the ocean. Sharks falling from the sky. Sharks voiced by Robert De Niro. Surely every single shark story that can be told has already been told? Well, actually no. Welcome to Dangerous Animals…
Here, we have Tucker, an Australian lunatic (Jai Courtney), preying on unsuspecting tourists. We’ve seen this before in several Ozploitation movies. The difference here is that once Tucker has finished playing with his food, he tosses them into shark infested waters to finish them off. The two unlucky potential victims in this case are Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) and Moses (Josh Heuston), respectively an American drifter and a local estate agent, who find themselves chained up on Tucker’s death boat.
Director Sean Byrne announced himself to the horror community with The Loved Ones, a famously nasty revenge story that remains criminally underrated. While Dangerous Animals never quite reaches the dizzy, deranged heights of that film, it’s still a high-octane horror thriller with solid performances and some gnarly special effects. Courtney is eerily convincing as the central protagonist and Harrison, always likeable, continues her hot streak after some sterling work in Yellowstone.
Dangerous Animals somehow manages to break new ground in the shark attack subgenre. While it’s far from a classic, if you want some dirty, low-down, gruesome fun, this is a pretty good starting point.
