For a long time, serial killer and shark movies were separate forms of cinema; never the twain did meet. In Dangerous Animals they’ve 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’t resulted in any real freshness or flair, playing out with a stinky waft of the familiar.
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’re 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.
The director, Sean Byrne (who previously helmed two more impressive horror movies: The Devil’s Candy and The Loved Ones), doesn’t follow the Jaws approach of making us wait to see the villain. Tucker appears in the first scene, even before the person who’ll 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 – and who could blame her? Perhaps she’s seenWake in Fright,Welcome to Woop Woop,Wolf Creek,The Surferor any of the zillion other Aussie films in which foreigners get flayed by life down under.
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“There was nothing for me on land,” Zephyr tells a young man, Moses (Josh Heuston), when he asks why she got into surfing. The point is stressed that she’s a solo operator and no pushover – but, once kidnapped by Tucker, Zephyr doesn’t have a lot to work with, being chained and immobile for much of the movie.
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’s trajectory is obvious: he’ll be the only person who notices that Zephyr is missing, goes searching for her and plays a role in the final act. It’s also clear that if Zephyr defeats the villain (partly a question of whether the producers envision sequels) it’ll only be after a few failed escape attempts.
Sometimes the dialogue feels prefabricated: after Tucker tells Zephyr she’s “hard as nails, like me”, you just know the protagonist will issue a curt rejection (she fires back: “I’m nothing like you!”). And moments that shouldpop don’t 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 inMom and Dad; instead it falls flat.
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: “I’ve been wide awake ever since,” he says, like a crew member onthe Nebuchadnezzar. Later he argues that sea predators protect the fabric of the universe: “The shark brings order and, without this, chaos reigns.” This dude really likes sharks.
It’s a funny thing to want a villain to be morehammy, especially when the performance is as good as Courtney’s (as his foil, Harrison is also strong, albeit in a blander role). But I did crave more scenery-chewing, more flamboyance, more chutzpah – anything to free Dangerous Animals from the straitjacket of formula.
Dangerous Animals is in cinemas now