Dangerous Animals: Film Review
I enjoy horrors, serial killers films and shark movies so Dangerous Animals was very much up my street. It’s a bit trashy but I had so much fun watching it.
The film stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, a badass American surfer who is captured by a shark-obsessed serial killer named Tucker (Jai Courtney) on Australia’s Gold Coast and held captive on his boat. She must find a way to escape before she becomes the next tourist to be fed to the sharks.
Dangerous Animals has a schlocky B-movie vibe and feels like the kind of straight-to-DVD horror that I used to rent from the video shop back in the day. It isn’t scary but it takes us on a very entertaining ride filled with jumps, laughs and plenty of violence and gore. It’s a great film to see with a crowd so you can experience it together; laughing, gasping and reacting to dumb decisions in unison.
I wondered how it would sustain a feature being such a contained story but there are some good twists and turns and many escape attempts. Zephyr is not a typical kidnap victim – she is feisty and rebellious and will stop at nothing until she is free from Tucker and his boat. You will be cheering her on all the way.
You do have to suspend your belief at times – it’s hard to believe that Tucker has been getting away with killing tourists for so long under the guise of his shark cage-diving attraction. There is a romance between Zephyr and a local Australian man named Moses (Josh Heuston) that is a bit cheesy, and for every smart decision, there’s a frustratingly silly one. But I also understand that it would be a short movie if an escape was easy.
The film’s biggest strength is Courtney, who is convincing as this menacing, unhinged psycho. Tucker is genuinely scarier than the sharks (truthfully, the shark aspect didn’t fully deliver) and the best sequence is his physical fight with three people on the boat. It’s gnarly, visceral and so bloody.
Dangerous Animals feels a bit low-rent but it’s still a fun time at the movies, especially if you’re watching with a crowd.
In cinemas from Friday 6th June