For a long time, serial killer and shark movies were separate forms of cinema; never the twain did meet. In Dangerous Animals they\u2019ve been blended into one foul fishy stew, theoretically delivering the best of both worlds: a Wolf Creekian adventure with a creature feature twist. But, sadly, this collision of genres hasn\u2019t resulted in any real freshness or flair, playing out with a stinky waft of the familiar.<\/p>\n
Jai Courtney gets the meatiest and most entertaining role as Tucker, the owner of a Gold Coast business that ferries thrill-seekers out into shark-infested waters, where they observe the great beasts from inside an underwater cage. After they\u2019re hauled back on to the boat, Tucker kills them and feeds them to the sharks, while filming their grisly deaths on a camcorder for his personal collection of VHS snuff films.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The director, Sean Byrne (who previously helmed two more impressive horror movies: The Devil\u2019s Candy and The Loved Ones), doesn\u2019t follow the Jaws approach of making us wait to see the villain. Tucker appears in the first scene, even before the person who\u2019ll challenge and perhaps even defeat him: the free-spirited US surfer and vagabond Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). Her strategy of dealing with locals seems to be avoiding them \u2013 and who could blame her? Perhaps she\u2019s seen Wake in Fright<\/a>, Welcome to Woop Woop<\/a>, Wolf Creek<\/a>, The Surfer<\/a> or any of the zillion other Aussie films in which foreigners get flayed by life down under.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was nothing for me on land,\u201d Zephyr tells a young man, Moses (Josh Heuston), when he asks why she got into surfing. The point is stressed that she\u2019s a solo operator and no pushover \u2013 but, once kidnapped by Tucker, Zephyr doesn\u2019t have a lot to work with, being chained and immobile for much of the movie.<\/p>\n Hassie Harrison as Zephyr. Photograph: AP<\/p>\n Dangerous Animals is quite sharply made, and for a while I was with it, enjoying the midnight-movie vibes. But its adherence to formula and sheer predictability stifle the fun. From early on Moses\u2019s trajectory is obvious: he\u2019ll be the only person who notices that Zephyr is missing, goes searching for her and plays a role in the final act. It\u2019s also clear that if Zephyr defeats the villain (partly a question of whether the producers envision sequels) it\u2019ll only be after a few failed escape attempts.<\/p>\n Sometimes the dialogue feels prefabricated: after Tucker tells Zephyr she\u2019s \u201chard as nails, like me\u201d, you just know the protagonist will issue a curt rejection (she fires back: \u201cI\u2019m nothing like you!\u201d). And moments that should pop don\u2019t quite land. A scene in which Tucker coaxes a couple of tourists into a rendition of Baby Shark could have been legendarily strange and meme-able, comparable perhaps to a sledgehammer-wielding Nicolas Cage singing the Hokey Pokey in Mom and Dad<\/a>; instead it falls flat.<\/p>\n Moments with the villain monologising fare a little better. The first occurs when Tucker recounts how, as a child, being bitten by a great white resulted in a quasi-religious experience: \u201cI\u2019ve been wide awake ever since,\u201d he says, like a crew member on the Nebuchadnezzar<\/a>. Later he argues that sea predators protect the fabric of the universe: \u201cThe shark brings order and, without this, chaos reigns.\u201d This dude really likes sharks.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a funny thing to want a villain to be more hammy, especially when the performance is as good as Courtney\u2019s (as his foil, Harrison is also strong, albeit in a blander role). But I did crave more scenery-chewing, more flamboyance, more chutzpah \u2013 anything to free Dangerous Animals from the straitjacket of formula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a long time, serial killer and shark movies were separate forms of cinema; never the twain did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-182630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114679327358474047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}