Dangerous Animals (2025) – Bloody Good Time

Released: 12th July
Seen: 15th August

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, sometimes the simplest ideas done well make for the best movies. An elevator pitch, a single sentence concept played out to its absolute limit, is often a great way to ensure a fun, exciting film for the audience. This feels especially true regarding Horror films which can have concepts as basic as “Girl going through puberty has telekinetic powers” or “Man in mask stalks babysitters”…. Or, in the case of Dangerous Animals, “Shark obsessed serial killer goes on a spree”, and in its brutal brilliant simplicity you end up with one of the most gloriously fun horror films of the year.

Dangerous Animals introduces us to Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a free-spirited backpacker making her way around the Gold Coast out of her van. She has a few hobbies, surfing and not giving a fuck about what anyone else thinks about her being the two biggest ones, and she’s pretty happy just keeping to herself. She does semi-reluctantly have something of a connection with a Mormon-looking real estate agent, Moses (Josh Heuston), but beyond that, she doesn’t have anyone in the world who would notice if she were gone. This self-isolation makes her a prime target for Tucker (Jai Courtney), a serial killer who uses his boat to take people out into the middle of the ocean and feed them to sharks for his own entertainment. Will Zephyr make it out alive or will she become chum? That’s gonna take an exhilarating 90 minutes to figure out.

Dangerous Animals takes the nightmare slasher tendencies of Friday the 13th and blends them with the animalistic tension of Jaws to create a masterpiece in over-the-top horror goodness. This wild blend of well-defined over-the-top characters and some creative, brutal, nightmarish shark shots feels wonderfully fresh in a genre that felt like it had run out of ways to have a shark chow down on a human being. Turns out the magic trick to making that fun again was the well-defined characters that inhabit the film, particularly Zephyr and Tucker who bounce off each other like Tom and Jerry only with more bloodshed. Sure, there’s the spectacle of the sharks just devouring people who are tied in place by a giant harness, we get a few of those pretty early on just to wet the audience’s appetite, but most of the real power of the film is that play between Zephyr and Tucker on the boat where we spend most of the film.

The isolating location of a boat in the middle of the ocean that is being piloted by a madman really helps push the tension up to incredible heights. It’s this stunning blend of a location that feels big, there’s a lot of rooms and places to hide but at the end of the day it’s isolated in the middle of the ocean, you can hide anywhere but a methodical maniac could find you and that is used to great effect several times in the film. The chase sequences are intense, the fights are so brutal it’s hard not to wince when blows are landed. The final girl circuit (you know, that moment at the end of all slasher movies where the final girl tries to escape but keeps bumping into the villain or into dead bodies) is one of the best I’ve seen in ages just because of how well it uses the unique space Dangerous Animals is playing in.

Speaking of that final girl circuit, the main reason it works is that Zephyr is an absolute all time great final girl. She’s the kind of character who will spit in the face of the killer as they’re plunging a knife in her gut and somehow be the most intimidating one. When I say this character has no limit to what they’ll do to survive I’m deadly serious. It’s a powerhouse performance that just can’t help but captivate from the moment Zephyr is on screen. It would easily be the best performance in Dangerous Animals were it not for the fact that Jai Courtney is fucking insane.

Jai Courtney as Tucker is one of my favourite performances of the year. Tucker is really just a spin on the Mick Taylor character from Wolf Creek, to the point where it could feel like a rip off if it was done badly but Jai’s complete commitment to the insanity makes for a captivating creature that just demands your full attention. Be it singing Baby Shark to lull someone into a false sense of security, drunk dancing around to Evie by Stevie Wright or monologuing about how a marlin is completely fucked once they’re on a hook, there’s a glorious sense of playfulness in every wicked word to ooze out of Tucker’s foul mouth. He’s enjoying himself, he’s delighting in the vile things he’s inflicting upon the people who happen to get on his boat. He’s menacing but he also has that special Aussie larrikin charm that is so bizarrely charming that it’s no wonder he’s gotten so many people to join him in the middle of the ocean. Put this on the list of “If the awards people were cool, we’d be having a different discussion” for 2025.

On top of all of this, Dangerous Animals is just stunningly well-made on every level. The visuals are sublime, every shot is so well framed that you can’t help but just stare in wonder and the tension ratchets up so effectively that there were times when I was hiding behind my hands which I do not do often (but then I remember this film is made by the same director who blessed us with the underappreciated film The Loved Ones, he’s really fucking good at this kind of horror). Its blending of absolute bone-shredding terror, dark comedy and emotional intensity all blend to create one of those films that’s just endlessly watchable and feels like it should be easy for any horror fan to love. It’s effective and powerful, building out the simple idea in every direction it can think of and creating some of the most intense sequences in horror this year.

Dangerous Animals pulled off doing something new in a Shark film, or at least something that felt new even if it wasn’t. It’s a fun, terrifying and intense story that’s dripping with blood and guts in the way a good over-the-top slasher horror film should. Brutal, shocking, absolutely fucking glorious in every possible way.