In “Dangerous Animals,” a Slasher and a Shark Movie Collide, And It’s Pretty Fun! | Review

Exactly 50 years ago, Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” taught us to get out of the water – because who wants to meet a killer shark that will devour us with deadly cruelty? Since then, we have seen many shark movies, some massive hits and others ridiculous, but also movies that present a dangerous twist. Thrillers that may seem at first glance like a shark movie, including in their name or poster, but the threat in them is entirely different.

Only in recent years, we have seen, for example, “Dangerous Waters” (2023) about shady criminals who board a cruise ship, “Dead Sea” (2024) about psychopaths who kidnap people to trade their organs, or even Art the Clown – well, the actor who played him – who disguises himself as a murderous Mickey Mouse who kills people on a cruise in New York (“Screamboat” from 2025). And some movies start as something romantic but turn into a horror movie when we discover that someone on the ship is a little crazy, like the average”Into the Deep” (2023) or “Donkey Punch” (2008), which shows that it’s not a good idea to have a threesome with a bit of weird sexual activity while sailing with strange men. These are just a few examples, among the movies I personally enjoy watching, even when they suck big time.

Sean Byrne’s “Dangerous Animals” offers another twist on the “survival in the water against a threat that is not just sharks” movie genre. Here, we discover that the threat is a nice-looking serial killer who traps people on his ship to throw them at some point as food for sharks. The result is an enjoyable and bloody movie, with impressive performances from the leading actors, which also manages to be suspenseful and creative at times. I doubt whether “Dangerous Animals” will make us more afraid of sharks or crazy people, but it does an effective job on each front.

Sharks And Other Disasters: What Is Dangerous Animals About?

“Dangerous Animals” is an Australian-American production that shows us from the start that our real threat is not those deadly animals on the water. The film opens with a well-crafted scene in which a couple goes shark diving, guided by Tucker (Jai Courtney, Captain Boomerang in “Suicide Squad”, as well as “Divergent”, “A Good Day to Die Hard”). Tucker, who was attacked by a shark as a child, has become a charismatic and rugged-looking individual. He recognizes the girl’s panic and chooses a creative calming technique, which scared the hell out of me (hint: it has to do with the children’s hit “Baby Shark”). Despite this, the two make it through the dive and even enjoy it. Right after they get out of the cage, our charismatic guy kills one of them and kidnaps the other. We’ll see why later.

The plot of “Dangerous Animals” revolves around an American surfer named Zephyr (Hassie Harrison, known for “Yellowstone” and “Tacuma FD”), who arrives on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Zephyr is a sexy and pretty cool girl, with a wild past, who meets a handsome and muscular guy named Moses (Australian Josh Heuston, known mainly from Australian TV series). The two sleep together, but Zephyr runs away before the charming guy even makes her pancakes, which means she’s probably a total bitch. There’s a price for that: she meets Tucker in the middle of the night, is kidnapped by him, and finds herself on his ship, imprisoned for what could be the sharks’ next dinner.

If you thought there were spoilers here, then you can rest easy. First of all, most of this information happens at the beginning of the film and also appears in the trailer, which reveals even more (and, to be honest, too much, as usual). Moreover, what’s interesting about “Dangerous Animals” is not necessarily the plot, but the way the director succeeds in creating tension and even a hint of horror, both in specific scenes and in the broader narrative sense.

Another Oortrait Of A Lovable Psychopath

“Dangerous Animals” Relies on a relatively small cast of actors, who do a great job. Jai Courtney has played the villain several times throughout his career, and his casting here is excellent. On the one hand, he has a kind of “Seth Rogen” likability, that of a cool guy who manages to explain sharks interestingly, making you want to meet a shark for a drink and maybe have sex with it.

The explanations about the fear factor of sharks are quite reflexive, as they relate to our fear, including that of the viewers’, of sharks. A fear that, as the director noted in some interviews, is inherent in our culture, but stems from entertainment and not from the truth. Tucker actually analyzes his attraction to sharks, and at the same time, why the viewer perceives them as particularly frightening – even more so than statistically more dangerous creatures, such as mosquitoes (here’s an article we wrote on the subject).

On the other hand, Courtney does manage to scare in some cases. The film presents him, far from surprisingly, as a slightly crazy guy. One who photographs the kills and creates a library of a shark torture porn torturer on VHS tapes, dancing strangely (by the way, it is said that the actor just got drunk and just “let it go”, without choreography or direction), barking at dogs and enjoying sadistically playing with his victims, thanks to some “games” he installed on his ship.

According to reports, the director ordered him to spend time with sharks to prepare for the film, connect with them, and understand their world, which helped. This is not an iconic villain character that we will remember for years, but one that definitely did the job. Above all, it is a character that the one who plays it has understood well and also enjoyed getting into, a combination that is quite rare in the realm of horror.

An Impressive Heroine Who Lacks In-Depth

Hussey Harrison impresses as the strong heroine. She manages to be visually attractive but also tough, smarter than most heroines we are used to seeing in horror films (The truth is, a military boot is more intelligent than them. But still.) Zephyr shows some creativity in her rescue attempts, with some interesting uses for a bra and other items, and has to deal with some pretty horrific decisions related to her body integrity.

I would still have wished for a little more background on her character, because we get pretty minimal information about some past incidents that explain why she’s tough (unfortunately, mentioning that she was in prison and learned to tell bad jokes there is far from enough). The film highlights her shapely body in a few instances, but the reality is that, regardless of her appearance, Zephyr’s character is a little too thin.

There are a few more characters in the story, such as the sympathetic and likable Moses, who makes every effort to make the girl he slept with more than just a one-night stand, trying not to throw the pancakes he made into the garbage, and later also tries to keep her alive. There is definitely chemistry and a bit of sexual tension between these two. Or the unfortunate Heather (Ella Newton, “Girl at the Window”, “Harrow”), another potential victim of Tucker, whose hysterical character we can forgive because the girl has been traumatized after all, while listening to a creepy version of” Baby Shark” and trying to stay alive.

Sharks Are The Nicer Ones

“Dangerous Animals” operates on several levels in terms of the experience it conveys to the viewer. There is, of course, the concern for the fate of the characters, which increases as the film progresses. To the credit of Nick Lepard’s (“Keeper”) script, we should note that the film focuses on the fight against the psychopath and does not compromise credibility by presenting excessively exaggerated risks. That is, we do not encounter the dangers that flood the screen in commercial quantities in aquatic survival films, such as storms, hunger, drowning, loss of oxygen, complex diving-related terminology, other monstrous creatures, ghosts, zombies, zombie-sharks, and so on.

To the detriment of the script, we will note some dialogues that I found too silly, including one of the last lines of “Oobie Doobie, motherfucker!”, perhaps inspired by familiar catchphrases in cinema such as “Yippee-ki-yay” from “Die Hard” or “Here’s Johnny!” from the excellent “The Shining.” The film does explain the origin of this term, mentioned earlier in the plot. Still, its use in this specific case seems mostly silly, forgettable, and not really related to anything. Besides, combining it and “Baby Shark” in one horror film was a bit too much for a delicate soul like mine.

Ah, and there are also the sharks, which, for some reason, I almost forgot about. The sharks are responsible for a significant portion of the blood that fills the ocean waters in the film. Still, they are not the “dangerous animals” here, but humans. Only in the final part of the film do we witness a life-and-death struggle with the sharks, and even that is relatively brief. The sharks here are a kind of tool that allows the serial killer to fulfill his sick fantasies, and you can also critically see this. It is difficult to claim that the film is a complete critique of humanity’s harm to nature, as seen in mediocre films like “The Black Demon”; however, it does highlight the problem of humans disrupting life in nature and using animals as a means of entertainment. On the other hand, this comes from an entertainment film that addresses the fear of sharks in advance, which means that there may also be reflexive criticism here.

One of the director’s stated goals was to create “a shark movie that doesn’t slander sharks.” A horrifying fact about Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” is that, following the film’s portrayal of sharks as fearsome creatures, the extent of their hunting increased dramatically. In the years following the film’s release, figures show that over 100 million sharks were hunted to death. Byrne’s goal was to create a movie in which man is the real killer, who only uses sharks for his own needs.

Is It Dangerous To Watch Dangerous Animals?

The cinematography of “Dangerous Animals” is certainly satisfactory, particularly in its ability to build tension. Byrne doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but manages to play with the emotions and assumptions of the viewers in some cases. The film progresses a bit beyond its initial gimmick – a combination of a shark movie with a slasher about a serial killer – even if it stays within the expected limits in some cases. The cinematography, editing, and sound editing are good, even if you’ll probably be left on your feet with each of them, as the film looks “okay” without any visual beauty to tell the story. The film includes blood and some creative “Saw”-style traps, even if the result is relatively subtle for what you might hope for.

We’ve seen before that Byrne knows how to make horror films, with two films (only) that he directed in his career: the excellent “The Loved Ones” from 2009, which we included in a review of recommended Australian horror films, and “The Devil’s Candy” from 2015. The problem is that these films were far from being commercial successes. They were distributed in a limited way around the world and received meager revenues, which did not cover their budget. According to reports, “The Loved Ones” was produced on a budget of about $4 million and grossed only about $350,000. “Dangerous Animals,” with a budget of approximately $2 million, grossed nearly $10 million worldwide, which is, of course, an improvement. Will Byrne’s work rate increase following the particular success of “Dangerous Animals”? Time will tell.

For budgetary or artistic reasons, the team chose not to use mechanical sharks in the style of “Jaws”, so that the sharks that appear are real and come from various research and archive footage. Moreover, the creators employed digital visual effects and computer animation, including in shots where the sharks’ fins are visible above the water, in replacing the backgrounds in which the sharks swim, or in combining the actors with existing shark footage.

This is where one of the problems in the film lies, and the interaction between humans and sharks was relatively limited. It may have slightly diminished the tension in its final part, where the heroes must fight for their lives in the blue waters against sharks that want to turn them red. On the other hand, at least we got some ridiculous “sharks” paddles here that were created in poor computer animation and look like some graphic accident.

Should You Watch Dangerous Animals?

“Dangerous Animals” faces a rather complex task: to combine two seemingly unrelated genres – slasher and shark movie – without remaining at the level of gimmick. In general, I think the film succeeded in this task on its own, even if, in my opinion, it is more successful as a film about a serial killer than as a survival film among sharks. It will keep you close to your seat for about an hour and a half and will also offer a mix of tension and humor, thanks to the charismatic performances by the cast (especially Courtney and Harrison).

The film is hardly groundbreaking in any sense, and it has a problematic ending. You will probably erase it from your memory quickly, and it’s unclear whether it will cultivate your fear of sharks, humans, or anything else. But sometimes pure entertainment is precisely what we’re looking for. Horror viewers, after all, are pretty easy prey.

Dangerous Animals (2025) – Frequently Asked Questions

Who directed Dangerous Animals? The director of the film is Australian Sean Byrne, who previously made “The Loved Ones” and “The Devil’s Candy”.

Who plays in Dangerous Animals? The cast of the movie is relatively minimal, featuring super-talented Jai Courtney as the villain and the stunning Hassie Harrison as the main protagonist. Other members of the cast are Josh Heuston, Ella Newton, Rob Carlton, and Liam Greinke.

Who wrote Dangerous Animals? Nick Lepard, who recently wrote Osgood Perkins’s “Keeper”, is responsible for the script.

How long is Dangerous Animals? The film’s duration is approximately 98 minutes.

When was the movie filmed? The countries of production are Australia, the United States, and Canada.

What languages can we hear in Dangerous Animals? Mostly English, but there are also songs (weird version of “Baby Shark”) and some strange catchphrases (“Oobie Doobie, motherfucker!” )

When was the movie released? The official release date of Dangerous Animals is June 6, 2025. A few weeks earlier, it was screened at Cannes.

What is the parental rating of Dangerous Animals? The film is rated R (age 16 and up) due to high violence, sexuality, language, and drug use.

What was the estimated budget of Dangerous Animals? According to online reports, the film’s budget was $2 million.

How much did the movie gross? About $9 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

What do the reviews say about the film? Dangerous Animals got good reviews. On IMDB, it holds a 6.4 rating (out of 10). As many as 87% of the professional critics on “Rotten Tomatoes” gave it a positive review. On Metacritic, it has a Metascore of 65.