Cast: Hassie Harrison, Josh Heuston, Jai Courtney
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Director: Sean Byrne
In Irish Cinemas: 6th June 2025
If the average serial killer weren’t already terrifying enough, “Dangerous Animals” — a razor-edged thriller set against the sunburnt coasts of Australia — ups the ante with a sadist whose murder weapon of choice is… sharks. The idea alone is more chilling than the great whites themselves, especially since most people can avoid becoming a shark snack by steering clear of their feeding grounds. But what happens when a predator brings the prey to them?
Picture this: You’re enjoying a day at the beach, the waves lapping at your feet, when you’re suddenly blindsided, knocked unconscious, and wake up shackled aboard a drifting vessel. You’re dragged miles offshore and dangled above water teeming with dorsal fins, while some twisted man films your terror for his personal VHS snuff archive. That’s the nightmare premise at the heart of Dangerous Animals, and it’s disturbingly plausible in the hands of screenwriter Nick Lepard and director Sean Byrne (The Devil’s Candy).
Byrne doesn’t give us time to rationalise the absurdity of the film’s concept. Instead, he propels us straight into the path of Bruce Tucker — the film’s predator in human form, played with grizzled menace by Jai Courtney. From the first scene, Tucker roars through town in a rusted-out pickup like a shark through shallow surf. He’s a tour boat operator, the kind of tourists who trust to show them a glimpse of oceanic danger from the safety of a cage. But in this story, the cage is optional — and the threat, far more human than anyone suspects.
The unlucky tourists in question are a thrill-seeking American couple hoping to cage dive with sharks, oblivious to the predator captaining their excursion. Tucker, a slab of muscle and menace, sets his sights on the young woman, casually flirting while preparing chum like he’s preparing a seduction. His fascination with sharks borders on fetishistic — he relishes the act of feeding them, watching with voyeuristic glee as jaws snap shut. When a monstrous Great White circles the boat, it feels like a perverse homage to Jaws — but unlike Spielberg’s classic, this film leans closer to Saw than summer blockbuster. The real monster isn’t beneath the water; it’s behind the wheel.
The title Dangerous Animals refers as much to Tucker as it does to the sharks he reveres — and maybe even more so to his next would-be victim: Zephyr, played with steely resolve and raw intensity by Yellowstone breakout Hassie Harrison. A lone wolf with a haunted past, Zephyr grew up bouncing between foster homes and now lives for the surf, chasing waves across the globe while avoiding human connection. Her arrival in Australia is meant to be another stop in her self-imposed isolation — until a petty run-in with a local named Moses (Josh Heuston) threatens to disrupt her solitude.
Their initial chemistry feels almost out of place — breezy, flirtatious, like something out of a CW romance. He catches her shoplifting, she challenges his judgment, and before long, they’re making pancakes and exchanging shy glances. It’s almost too sweet to be real, but that tonal shift is intentional. Byrne wants us to care, so when Zephyr vanishes and Moses tries to find her, we’re invested. And when he, too, falls into Tucker’s trap, the stakes escalate beyond the simple cat-and-mouse routine. This is survival horror with an emotional core.
Tucker doesn’t just want victims — he wants control, ritual, and trophies. His boat is a floating butcher’s shop, every detail drenched in dread thanks to production designer Pete Baxter. Names of past victims are carved into the walls. A cabinet holds dozens of VHS tapes, each labelled with a name and a lock of hair — a horrifying catalogue of suffering, never shown explicitly but implied with harrowing efficiency. The film knows that the most disturbing horrors are the ones we imagine, not the ones we see.
And then there’s Courtney. Once a rising action star with roles in Jack Reacher and A Good Day to Die Hard, he’s grown into a physically intimidating screen presence, the kind of guy who doesn’t need weapons to be terrifying. As Tucker, he’s not a frothing lunatic but a cold, calculating apex predator. He chains Zephyr to a steel bed inside his locked cabin, convinced he’s broken another soul. But what he underestimates is her resolve. She’s not just a damsel waiting to be saved — and when Moses tries to play the hero, he becomes just another captured piece in Tucker’s psychotic game.
What makes Dangerous Animals truly unnerving isn’t just its violence, but its proximity to the everyday—party boats cruise by in the distance. Tourists laugh, dance, and drink just out of reach. The music from their celebrations bleeds into the background — not as a hopeful contrast, but as a grotesque soundtrack that drowns out the screams echoing from Tucker’s hellish domain.
Despite its grim subject matter, the film never devolves into cheap exploitation. It’s sharp, stylish, and deliberate in its terror, with Byrne’s direction ensuring that every frame carries a sense of unease. The horror here isn’t just about getting eaten by a shark — it’s about being powerless, trapped, forgotten, and filmed. And when the inevitable feeding frenzy arrives, you’ll be holding your breath for the right reason: not because of what’s under the water, but because of what’s walking around on land.
Overall: 7.5/10
Movie Reviewer
