Directed By Sean Byrne

Starring – Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston

The Plot – When Zephyr (Harrison), a savvy and free-spirited surfer, is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer (Courtney) and held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below.

Rated R for strong bloody violent content/grisly images, sexuality, adult language and brief drug use.

Dangerous Animals: Official Trailer | Jai Courtney | HD | IFC Films

POSITIVES

Unlike a majority of other streaming apps, Shudder has found a stably effective consistency with its brand of eclectic horror that thoroughly entertains, and with “Dangerous Animals”, the app’s newest survival horror thriller, it finds another for the growing pile of compelling gut-wrenchers that once again proves Australia to be a place that is worth staying away from. In his single biggest success since 2009’s “The Loved Ones”, Sean Byrne emphatically proves his decades of experience in the industry, both with enthralling sequences of tension and urgency that make the most of this intimately isolated setting, but also a vital element of restrain on the enveloping personality that excites its audience without sacrificing the integrity of its picture. As to where shark movies typically bring with them the kind of stock dialogue and campy direction that make it difficult to take them seriously at face value, Byrne instills an unflinching vulnerability factor in the depths of his established conflict, and the result is 90 minutes of breathtaking persistence between these two characters that continuously finds innovative ways for them to one-up each other, all the while articulating a variety of angles in, above and below the water, to never lose sight of those savages of the sea, whose insatiable hunger for flesh never withers. Aside from impactful direction from Byrne, the film is aided tremendously by the performances of Hassie Harrison and Jai Courtney, who each imbed so much conscience and personality to their respective portrayals. Harrison, in her best Jennifer Lawrence impression, materializes a resiliency and grit to Zephyr that make her feel like anything other than the typical helpless victim that we’ve come to expect in these movies, and with an equally gratifying emotionality to her portrayal that always earns empathetic investment, despite a character never detracted by fear or overcoming adversity, Harrison commands the screen as grippingly as her male counterpart, making Zephyr one of those protagonists who will go down swinging to her final breath. As for Courtney, his predatory impulses featuring coldly callous eyes, and chilling deliveries, cements what I feel will be a career-defining role for the Aussie actor, with a darker and more depraved opportunity than even that of his time as Captain Boomerang, in 2016’s “Suicide Squad”. Essentially, this film lives or dies with Courtney’s spine-chilling turn as this ominously unforgiving serial killer, and with the script doing the character an immense favor to never reveal too much about his backstory or reasoning for killing, Courtney can revel in the mystique of his character’s design, with an unrelenting earnestness to kill, similar to the very sharks that dominate his surrounding waters. In terms of technical components, the cinematography from Shelley Farthing-Dawe works breathlessly with audible entrancement of Michael Yezerski’s rivetingly epic score, underlining sequences of chase and capture with an exclamation point of emphasis that blows the proverbial steam off of the movie’s kettle. Yezerski’s penchant for the overly dramatic go a long way towards helming these confrontations with thunderous volume and echo in the instrumentals, and it gives the sequences so much urgency to what is transpiring with cerebral velocity, making it one of those rare examples where I’m glad that the production over-intruded on the dynamic of the scene, in order to elicit the anxieties within Zephyr’s overwhelming odds. Speaking of urgency, once the movie gets past its initial fifteen minutes, its pacing settles into a comfortably consistent rhythm that constantly keeps the storytelling moving forward, even when the script pauses for the occasional exposition to Zephyr’s character. One could certainly accuse these scenes of shoe-horning a lot of information in such tight spaces, both literally and figuratively, but the naturalism of the conversations, combined with the urgency in Zephyr’s plight, kept Byrne from ever losing sight of the stakes that continuously hang overhead, making “Dangerous Animals” one of those films that can thoroughly entertain you, without testing your patience.

NEGATIVES

I previously mentioned the movie’s opening fifteen minutes being a weakness of sorts for the overall progression of the narrative, and that’s because it introduces this love story subplot to Zephyr’s introduction that inadvertently compromises a lot of what we’re learning about the character, throughout the engagement. Push aside the fact that these are the scenes that move the slowest throughout the movie’s duration, or the fact that the chemistry between these two never feels palpable, and you’re left with this badass of a heroine who continuously expresses her need to be alone, despite the first thing we learn about her is how rushed she falls head over heels for this emerging Moses (That is literally his name), contradicting the desire to make this protagonist one of those characters without any element of vulnerability to her opposition’s plight. While it’s easy to understand what Moses represents in the situation, as early as his first couple of scenes, for my money it takes away too much time Courtney’s killer, especially after an introduction that fittingly tested the waters for what’s to come, and it makes me wish the film just omitted this male love interest all together from the finished product. The script also isn’t perfect when it comes to stretching out the logic in these character’s intentions, especially the killer, who is either the smartest or dumbest killer, depending on what scene you’re watching. Why would a killer leave behind a cell phone from one of his victims? Why would he choose to wait to kill certain characters, while immediately sacrificing others? Why would he keep so much convicting evidence on board? Because the plot absolutely requires him to, and while some audiences can overlook these conveniences in being necessary needs for Zephyr to evade capture, at times, I only see them as the telegraphing of future circumstances that they continuously spoil themselves to be, conveying to me that the one thing I learn about this killer is that he hasn’t learned from what feels like years of predatory killing within this Australian community. Finally, while the movie’s suspense and thrilling aspects of its direction are always palpably resonating, the horror elements are sadly very underwhelming, particularly those very few kills that should’ve lunged a greater detail of gore to the situations entailed. This is where the movie truly shows its minimized budget, as some deaths are framed slightly off-screen, others are cleverly edited to not linger too long on the imagery, and others are submerged by the surrounding waters, so as not to zero in on scattered limbs. Part of me appreciates a director who leaves more to the imagination, but I always felt that these kills were missing something extra with their lasting impacts, and even in the case of one character being swallowed whole by a shark, it’s congested by this horribly artificial element of C.G that wasn’t convincing or particularly appealing to the depiction, leaving me wishing that special effects could’ve garnered a greater impact to the lasting memory of the engagement, especially with only four deaths in the entirety of the movie.

OVERALL
“Dangerous Animals” is a rip-roaring, genre-bending thriller that urgently and efficiently makes the most of the limitations within its premise, while cementing two mesmerizing performances from Courtney and Harrison that heavily influence its appeal. While the film is nearly pulled under by incessant logic lapses in its script, and an underutilization of its horror in the special effects, Sean Byrne’s direction helps the film ascend to surface level, with enough fun and ferocity to the engagement that makes this one of the more effortlessly entertaining films that you will watch at home, this year.

My Grade: 6.9 or C+