Dangerous Animals review – why sharks? They’re… | Little White Lies

Dan­ger­ous Ani­mals review – why sharks? They’re cinematic!

03 Jun 2025 / Released: 06 Jun 2025

Words by Anton Bitel

Directed by Sean Byrne

Starring Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, and Josh Heuston

A young blonde woman standing in dark water, holding a wooden pole as a weapon.
A young blonde woman standing in dark water, holding a wooden pole as a weapon.
4

Anticipation.

Big fan of Australian horror dude Sean Byrne.

4

Enjoyment.

Less Wolf Creek and more Shark Ocean.

4

In Retrospect.

Not the shark film I was expecting. Much, much better.

Preda­tors and prey share the same ter­rain in this psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly twist­ed shark thriller from genre film­mak­er Sean Byrne.

Near the begin­ning of Sean Byrne’s Dan­ger­ous Ani­mals, Surfers Par­adise local Moses (Josh Heuston) asks Amer­i­can free spir­it Zephyr (Has­sie Har­ri­son) if she likes the aisle or the win­dow seat. It is is his way of get­ting to know her which imme­di­ate­ly teas­es out the obvi­ous dif­fer­ences between them: he is an aisle per­son, open and socia­ble, while she is very much the win­dow type, pri­vate and aloof. Still, his gam­bit pays off, for they are soon sleep­ing togeth­er in the back of her van, parked out­side his house that she is not yet will­ing to enter – and in spite of her vaunt­ed inde­pen­dence, she likes Moses, and is think­ing of see­ing him again.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, though, Zephyr is about to fall into the clutch­es of Tuck­er (Jai Court­ney). A much more soli­tary crea­ture even than her­self, Tuck­er takes tourists out on his boat for shark dives, but he is also a ser­i­al killer who gets off on film­ing his clients, espe­cial­ly the women, being torn apart in the preda­tors’ jaws.

Like the sharks here that spec­tac­u­lar­ly swim around these chum-filled waters before mov­ing in for the kill, Byrne has come full cir­cle. For his career start­ed in his native Aus­tralia with the prom pan­de­mo­ni­um of 2009’s The Loved Ones, then moved state­side for the Texas-set saga of art, evil and errant mas­culin­i­ty in 2015’s The Devil’s Can­dy. Now, he returns to Australia’s Gold Coast. Yet the one con­stant in his films is hor­ror of a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly twist­ed vari­ety, where preda­tors and prey share the same ter­rain and where sur­vival of the fittest often requires a rever­sal of roles.

Dan­ger­ous Ani­mals might sound like just anoth­er of the count­less, typ­i­cal­ly direct-to-video shark movies that have come in the wake of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), but in fact this is more like a merg­er of Irv­ing Pichel and Ernest B Schoedsack’s The Most Dan­ger­ous Game (1932) and Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek (2005). For here in fact the title refers to the human play­ers, with the sharks just there as objec­tive cor­rel­a­tives for the char­ac­ters’ unfold­ing psychodrama.

So why sharks? The sim­ple answer is that they are cin­e­mat­ic, as Tuck­er knows full well. He is after all film­ing these deaths so that he can savour all the gory details lat­er while eat­ing his own meal – and he reg­u­lar­ly talks about his mur­ders as a show”, declares, Brief inter­mis­sion, ladies and gen­tle­men” when the rit­u­al has to be paused, and even likes to force one pris­on­er to watch the other’s ago­nis­ing dis­mem­ber­ment. There is a strong metacin­e­mat­ic ele­ment to all this show­man­ship, and as Zephyr must work out just how much like Tuck­er she is capa­ble of being, we too are con­front­ed with the nature of our own spec­ta­tor­ship, uncom­fort­ably sim­i­lar to Tucker’s, for in our win­dow seat on events, we are no cap­tive audience.

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