Film Review: Dangerous Animals

Welcome back to the blog readers. For those who are not aware of my love/hate relationship with horror films, you would know that I have been trying to like more of them to erase the stigma that I hate most of them. 2025 has been a great year for horror so far, with a streak of 3 films that have been at least pretty good. Would the streak continue with this film or would this be the first real stinker of the year? Stick around to find out.

Dangerous Animals was directed by Sean Byrne from a screenplay by Nick Lepard. The film stars Hassie Harrison, Josh Heuston, Rob Carlton, Ella Newton, Liam Greinke, and Jai Courtney. In the film, two foreign women visit Australia only to be met, and later abducted, by a serial killer who has a fascination with sharks. The two must work together and outsmart the killer to avoid being fed to the sharks in the ocean.

When I heard about this film and its premise, I was very hesitant because it basically felt like another Jaws (1975) ripoff. But then I saw reviews calling this film very good and I thought to myself this film may just be worth checking out. Here's the thing though. This film is more Saw (2004) than Jaws and I think it barely works as either. Jai Courtney's maniacal performance is worth the price of admission, but a shotty story makes for a dulled experience overall.

I do want to talk about Jai Courtney as our main serial killer Tucker. Courtney has been one of the more underrated and underutilized actors we have had in the last 15 years. Appearing in such projects as Terminator Genisys (2015), Suicide Squad (2016) and its follow-up The Suicide Squad (2021), Courtney can deliver the goods and usher a manic performance. But he ramps it up by about a hundred percent for the character of Tucker, and this may just be his finest performance yet. Rotten Tomatoes called it a "thrillingly unhinged heel turn," and I cannot see a lie here. He brings the cool and charisma when he needs to, but when it comes time to unleash and go full-on John Kramer, he is magnificently delightful doing it. This won't win him any Oscars or anything, but this should be the vehicle that gets him more roles because he is much deserving of it.

Now I have to talk about the script and story of this film. I will admit that this film does follow a very familiar path when it comes to the whole "girl is kidnapped by guy who plans to do nefarious things to her" plotline. But I can appreciate some of the deviations that exist in the film. One of the things I very much appreciate is how smart they made Tucker, our serial killer. It seems like for every trick our protagonist comes up with to get out of her situation, Tucker is able to stay hot on her trails and get the best of her. This even led me to believe that we actually were going to get a film in which the protagonist lost and the killer won. That expectation got subverted and I wound up being pretty disappointed. I guess call it tempered expectations.

In conclusion, Dangerous Animals can showcase a maniacal performance from Jai Courtney but a shotty script that does not add anything new to the genre. Thank you all for reading, and remember folks...ba-by shark do do do do do do.