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Dangerous Animals Review:
Inventive Shark Horror
is Violent Fun
CANNES - DIRECTOR’S FORTNIGHT

Words by Alex Secilmis 24 May 2025
For 50 years, the shark thriller has been set up to fail. After Jaws did it to perfection, giving us the first summer blockbuster and a revered horror classic all at once, any attempt is compared unfavourably to the classic creature feature. Yet, in his third film, director Sean Byrne has found a fresh angle. The villain is not a vicious fish with sharp teeth, but a diabolical, wildly charismatic Jai Courtney as an Australian serial killer. He feeds his victims Vegemite toast before feeding them to his cold-blooded friends.

Riding the wave of its midnight movie charm, Dangerous Animals is a tightly paced crowd-pleaser that goes overboard in all the right ways. The film follows a guarded American surfer named Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) who, after getting cosy with a jacked-yet-sensitive local (Josh Heuston), finds herself trapped on a ship steered by our antagonist, Tucker (Courtney). His psychopathy is explained by a humorously straightforward backstory: he survived a shark attack as a child, so now he gets his kicks by filming his aquatic atrocities on a retro camcorder.



Premiering in the Director’s Fortnight festival, the thriller was a resounding hit at Cannes. With a wicked horror/comedy blend, the film united its international audiences, who collectively cheered on the final girl and gasped at the gore. Somebody even fainted at my screening.

Harrison makes for a competent lead as a rebellious, take-no-prisoners heroine. Her emotional arc is woefully banal—but that’s kind of the point. There’s humour to be found in her bare-bones journey with intimacy, like in a saccharine scene where she types out an earnest text to her love interest before deleting it. Meanwhile, Courtney steals the show as the devilish director of shark-starring snuff films, striking a perfect balance between horror and hilarity. He delivers over-dramatic speeches about the animal kingdom with comic conviction, and dances in his underwear and kimono to rival Sebastian Stan’s sequences in Fresh.



Dangerous Animals succeeds because it knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and delivers its lurid sharksploitation delights in style. A winning summer thriller, Byrne’s film is frenetic fun and an ideal theatregoing experience.