Dangerous Animals [Film Review]

Dangerous Animals
Released: June 12, 2025

Director: Sean Byrne
Starring: Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, and Josh Heuston.

It’s a bit of a worldwide joke that everything in Australia will try to kill you. You know summer has arrived when the “shark sighting” news reports appear in your newsfeed every other day because apparently people are still stunned sharks have the audacity to swim in their own home. We have spiders so large they should be paying rent, but its the small ones that are more likely to do some real damage. Kangaroos that will kick your ass into next week if you use the wrong tone of voice... drop bears, crocodiles, the outback…. but nobody ever adds humans to that list because Aussies are so laidback we can’t be fucked being serial killers. So here’s this new Aussie horror flick about sharks and the real question begins: what is the dangerous animal?

Well if you’ve ever watched The Most Dangerous Game (there’s about 4 versions of that movie on Prime Video right now if you haven’t) you already know the answer to that: Man. In a similar premise, we have Tucker (Jai Courtney) who at the very young age of 7, survived a shark attack and grew up with a warped view of the world. He’s extremely knowledgeable about the wildlife and acts a bit like a game show host sprouting his random facts which always relate to whatever is happening at that very moment. He’s kinda like David Attenborough if David Attenborough was a shark obsessed serial killer.

In a world where nobody has watched Wolf Creek or Hostel, we have some tourists who haven’t learned the importance of telling anyone where they are going. Like not even a quick social media post to gloat about their latest adventure. Spontaneity is great unless you’re in a country that’s 50% barren land and surrounded by sharks. Heather (Ella Newton) and Greg (Liam Greinke) are two backpackers who slept in and missed out on going to Sea World, so they decide to go to some shady looking dock to hop on a shadier looking boat to go shark cage-diving and not a single person knows. What could possibly go wrong? Like I don’t even understand how sleeping in affects someone’s ability to go to a theme park. There are buses. I googled.

Heather is rightfully freaking out before they enter the cage and Tucker tells them of an ancient meditation method he knows. Breathe in. Breathe out. Sing Baby Shark. Honestly, that should have been the huge red flag this guy was a psychopath. In the water though, Heather calms her shit and it was a real “how’s the serenity?” moment. Under the water it’s peaceful, the sharks just calmly swimming about, unbothered by each other or the two humans in the cage nearby. She survives the shark dive but her friend doesn’t, he’s stabbed in the throat and pushed overboard to feed the sharks.

It’s not until Tucker kidnaps surfer chick Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) at a beach car park that we find out exactly what game he likes to play. Now Tucker isn’t a pervert in the normal sense but he does like using women as fish food and filming it for his pleasure on his trusty VHS handycam. When it’s Heather’s moment to shine, we get a short nod to JAWS as the sharks below drag her body back and forth before she finally dies.

Zephyr isn’t going down without a fight, and this girl really does have a strong will to live, she just doesn’t have much in the way of common sense. During a blitz attack where she actually manages to knock Tucker out and finally uncuffs herself, rather than cuff Tucker’s foot to the bed - which was laying right next to her and would take zero effort - she fucks around going through his pockets instead and he regains consciousness. I realise horror movies would be over in 20 minutes if people had common sense, but sometimes it would just be nice to see someone try to be smart. As things progress you definitely realise this girl has dumb luck on her side.

Dangerous Animals swaps the thrills of grisly shark attacks with the tension of being trapped on a boat with a serial killer and needing to make a choice between staying on the boat with him, or taking a chance swimming in shark infested waters to save yourself. Personally I would have loved to have seen Tucker make the Vegemite sandwiches because tourists just can’t handle that stuff and nothing makes someone ask you if you’re mentally okay faster than sharing how you make Vegemite toast on social media. Full disclosure: I don’t like to see the bread underneath. Now women everywhere have gone on and on lately about how ‘hot’ the dance scene was in Baby Girl and I’m just here to say that Christian Grey wannabe had nothing on Jai Courtney dirty dancing in his cabin, and if you ask me, it was also the scariest scene in the entire movie. It is literally burned into my retinas. One scene in particular made me grimace and for how little we see, it kinda put that whole chopping your foot off in SAW seem a bit meh. Despite my personal attack on her fight or flight mode, Zephyr is definitely the ultimate Final Girl because she refuses to give this deranged lunatic an ounce of satisfaction and fights him every step of the way. Nothing is off limits when it comes to trying to save herself.

Admittedly I haven’t watched every shark movie ever made because some of them look truly atrocious and I wish I had used this level of caution before watching The Requin, but Dangerous Animals is definitely the first Pro-Life movie for the shark community that I have ever seen. Except maybe Finding Nemo, if that counts. Despite Tucker’s claims that after years of boat tours luring sharks for tourists, sharks now associate boats with food, the sharks weren’t portrayed as vicious psychopaths eager to tear a person from limb to limb and they weren’t ready and willing to stalk an entire family, they were just existing peacefully under the waters surface. Whenever we get a scene with a shark, they are shown in a state of total tranquility with calm music playing softly over the top.

Proof of the power of movie scores because this same footage could have had the ‘dun dun dun dun..’ JAWS theme music and become a scene of absolute dread. The moral of this tale, other than use your brain when travelling, is as long as nobody thrashes about like a drowning seal, sharks don’t care about you. I’m not going to go for a swim and put it to the test anytime soon though.

Rating: 3/5
Review by Katie Torrance