When director Sean Byrne delivers a new film, it’s something of an event. The Aussie creator has only made two other films, 2009’s The Loved Ones and 2017’s The Devil’s Candy (both well received), but he’s not exactly churning them out.
Bryne’s latest is the ‘serial killer meets shark’ thriller, Dangerous Animals, which has an ingenuous premise: what if a female surfer – Zephr (Hassie Harrington, Yellowstone) – was abducted by a psychopath whose kink is filming women being consumed by sharks off of Australia’s Gold Coast?
The villain in question is Tucker (Jai Courtney, Spartacus), who has a habit of cruising around in his beaten up truck, looking for potential victims. He subdues them, imprisons them on his fishing boat, then sedates and strings them up in a harness before lowering them into chum-infested water. Like Mark Duplass’ Creep (Tapes) villain, Tucker has a penchant for taping his victims’ final moments so that he can watch them again over breakfast.
Sidebar: If there was a shared universe for creepy horror villains, the pair would 100% form some kind of ‘VHS exchange’ club.
Canadian screenwriter Nick Lepard does a solid job of introducing the characters in order to encourage emotional investment without sacrificing the pacing. We know enough about Zephr to understand why the American has run away to surf in Australia, as well as her reticence to let Moses (Josh Heuston, Dune: Prophecy), a cute one-night stand, get to know her in any meaning way.
Most of this occurs in the first act following an introductory set piece that helps to establish the stakes and sheds a little blood.
Of course, it’s inevitable that Zephr will cross paths with Tucker, but it’s still a surprisingly effective jump scare when he nabs her. From there, it’s full steam ahead as the surfer desperately plots to outwit the serial killer before she and fellow captive Heather (Ella Newton) are fed to the sharks. With Moses still in the mix as he looks into Zephr’s disappearance, the stage is set for a battle of wills.
The film boasts a relatively small cast, which can occasionally pose a challenge because there need to be enough narrative hurdles to sustain the runtime. These kinds of thrillers live and die on their near escapes and Dangerous Animals is quite good at baiting the hook. It’s important that Zephr has at least one – if not several – in order to build tension and give the character a sense of agency.
But she also can’t simply escape in the first act because then there’s no film.
In this capacity, Lepard has enough twists and complications to keep the thriller going, with only the occasional dip into “suspend your disbelief” territory. And there are several satisfying sequences that give Zephr, Moses, and even Heather, an opportunity to try their hand at battling or fleeing from Tucker.
Thankfully, despite the sex of the victims that Hunter targets, there’s only a small insinuation of sexual assault. Men don’t typically last long on Hunter’s boat, but Tucker doesn’t seem interested in the women outside of handcuffing and stringing them up. For squeamish audiences worried about gendered violence, think cat and mouse, not torture porn.
Harrington is solid as the Final Girl – she’s believable in both the emotionally vulnerable moments, as well as the action sequences. There’s also a sweet, sexy chemistry between Zephr and Moses that helps sell the idea that a one-night stand would go to such great lengths to track her down.
The film’s true stand-out, however, is Courtney. Tucker is a big personality and it could have been tempting to overplay the character, but Courtney follows in the footsteps of fellow Aussie performer John Jarratt in Wolf Creek by underplaying the role. Tucker is charming, funny, and even a little bit sexy when he’s not engaging in homicidal activities.
The piece de resistance – and arguably the moment that sells the actor’s performance, the character’s psychopathy, and contains that tiniest hint of sexualized violence – occurs when Tucker dances drunkenly in his underwear as his victims scream.
It’s a highly memorable, slightly sexy, and vaguely uncomfortable moment that evokes Buffalo Bill’s dance in The Silence of The Lambs and I guarantee you that this is the scene that will sell audiences on Courtney if they were unfamiliar with him before. The man’s got charisma! 4/5
Dangerous Animals is in theaters June 6
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