One Star Classics : Dangerous Animals

Dangerous Animals

Oct 10, 2025 / Thriller

Now, here’s an unexpected treat of Tim Tam-like proportions: Dangerous Animals, a tense thriller set on Australia’s shark-infested Gold Coast, with a killer performance by Jai Courtney. The film is a mix of Ozzie serial-killer fare – ozploitation – and a large chunk of stay-out-of-the-water tropes which, in this case, work. Being stuck in the water with sharks is never not scary. Why mess with the formula?

It has a fairly simple plot, Dangerous Animals. Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), an American surfer living in Australia, is abducted by Bruce (Courtney), the captain of a shark-tour boat. Bruce (who shares his name with the shark in Jaws, trivia fans) has more than a simple fascination with sharks and harbors a bit of a penchant for feeding living victims to the animals. All while filming it on an eighties-looking camcorder. Not surprisingly, Dangerous Animals turns into a cat-and-mouse game between Zephyr and Bruce.

So, there’s not a whole lot to the story, and that’s perfectly fine. A film like this rests largely on the actors, and both Courtney and Harrison do more than anyone could reasonably ask of them. Particularly Courtney – who, judging by his looks, has entered the Sammy Hagar phase of his career – hits a home run, portraying Bruce with charm and unhinged menace. The two characters’ tête-à-tête is as natural-feeling as one could hope for in a high-concept plot like this. The supporting cast is equally adept.

Jai Courtney and Sammy Hagar looking the same — Separated at birth: Jai Courtney and Sammy Hagar.

Director Sean Byrne, too, does a lot with little. Dangerous Animals does, for the most part, take place far out at sea, and lingering shots of the boat in the vast, empty ocean give a good feeling of how trapped Zephyr is. Rarely has something so open felt so claustrophobic.

Ninety minutes is a long time for a cat-and-mouse film like this, but between the performances and the restrained visuals, I never found myself looking at my watch. Dangerous Animals is appropriately tense throughout. Granted, things start becoming a bit far-fetched toward the end, and I’m guessing Byrne and screenwriter Nick Lepard might have lost some confidence in the story’s pacing, which is too bad. Up until then, the movie never felt like a genre parody, and while it still doesn’t quite get to that level, there are moments when it’s flirting with it. Still, at least it’s not boring, and it does give Courtney a chance to put a little mustard on the ham.

A couple of small speedbumps don’t take much away from what is a tense little thriller that surely will give you galeophobia.

Fun fact! Galeophobia can both mean fear of sharks and fear of cats. Sounds like something that could be the concept of a true farce. (The more you know.)

By Remi, Oct 10, 2025

Letterboxd summary: A savvy and free-spirited surfer is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer. Held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below.