Its fifty years since Jaws terrified everyone and since then the shark movie has become something of a summer staple with recent years giving us The Shallows, 47 Metres Down, The Meg and now added to that list is Dangerous Animals that puts its own spin on the shark attack. And that spin is a terrific Jai Courtney as Tucker a jocular and charming captain of his own boat that takes tourists out to swim with the sharks.
Except it’s not quite the shark cage experience because Tucker is a serial killer that drugs the tourists, straps them into a harness and lowers them into the ocean for the sharks to feed on whilst he video tapes the carnage to watch at a later date. Of course he does! It’s an uncomfortable scene and plays a little like the torture porn horror films of the early noughties. Further, there’s a scene where Tucker sits eating his dinner nonchalantly watching a tape of one of his female victims devoured that’s not dissimilar to a scene in Henry Portrait of a serial killer where Henry watches a video tape of a family he slaughters and here as it is there, makes us as complicit in enjoying the gnarly horror as him.
But into this comes Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) who lives in her van and lives for the Australian surf who hooks up with Moses (Josh Heuston) and it’s not the sea he parts when the two hook up after he gets her to help him jump start his car’s flat battery. But its Zephyr who flits away after a night together not wanting to be tied down which is exactly what happens when Tucker encounters her parked up in her camper van early one morning as she waits for the surf. It’s the start of a Zephyr v Tucker cat and mouse battle of wits on board his boat out at sea surrounded by sharks.
Dangerous Animals is not without its undoubted implausibility that Tucker has been doing this sort of things for years as witnessed by his extensive catalogue of video tapes and yet has never been caught or had the police sniffing round, But as a genre flick there’s a lot of fun here in what is sure to be the sleeper hit of the summer.
related feature : A trio of enormous Megalodon shark fins breached the River Thames !
related feature : The story behind the shot – Jaws
Here’s the Dangerous Animals trailer…..
