Jai Courtney plays the role of a sociopathic Aussie skipper named Tucker in the film Dangerous Animals.Elevation Pictures
Dangerous Animals
Directed by Sean Byrne
Written by Nick Lepard
Starring Jai Courtney, Hassie Harrison and Josh Heuston
Classification N/A; 98 minutes
Opens in theatres June 6
Rescuing the killer-shark genre from the jaws of defeat, the new Aussie thriller Dangerous Animals is like a bowl of shark-fin soup laced with a dollop of vegemite: not exactly good for either you, your taste buds or the environment, but strangely compelling nonetheless.
Written by Canadian Nick Lepard but set firmly on the Gold Coast, Dangerous Animals plays with all the expected elements of a shark movie – feeding frenzies, jump scares, menacing shots of fins skimming the surface of an otherwise placid body of water – but adds a bizarre serial-killer twist.
Yes, in this deep blue sea outing, it’s not just the hammerheads and makos that you need to worry about, but a sociopathic Aussie skipper named Tucker (Jai Courtney) who offers guided tours of their waters like Robert Shaw’s Quint gone to seed. If Tucker doesn’t stab you with a knife aboard his boat first, he’ll toss you into the water as chum, eager to film all the bloody action for his own personal shark-snuff film collection.
Recognizing that everything in the preceding paragraph sounds patently absurd, Courtney delivers a knowingly gonzo performance as Tucker, blazing past his history of ho-hum Hollywood heroes (Terminator Genisys, Suicide Squad, Divergent) to deliver a truly inspiring villain whose insanity knows no bounds. While Lepard and director Sean Byrne briefly flirt with overanalyzing Tucker’s psychosis – as a child, Tucker was attacked by sharks, though he seems to blame his parents more than the sea creatures – the filmmakers mostly let their leading man to go fully, madly unhinged. The actor is a megalodon of mania, chewing up the screen with the strength of more than a dozen great whites. Someone lock Courtney and Gerard Butler in the same shark cage, and see who emerges alive.
Regrettably, Courtney can only chomp so hard and for so long, and eventually the film crests back to the story of Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a strong-willed American surfer who is abducted by Tucker. Will Zephyr become shark food? Will she be rescued by the cute yet rather dumb real-estate agent (Josh Heuston) whom she met the evening before? Will there be more blood shed aboard Tucker’s ship than in the water, including a gnarly sequence involving not the teeth of a shark but the gnashers of a human? All these questions and more will be answered in a brisk and efficient 98 minutes – although it is hard to care much about any query that doesn’t involve Courtney.
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Dangerous Animals won’t quite put you off going in the water again. But it will make you rethink Courtney’s role in Terminator Genisys. And that’s its own very special kind of wonder from Down Under. G’day, Jai. G’day.
Chomp and Circumstance: The Best Killer Shark Movies
5. The Meg (2018): Jason Statham versus a giant prehistoric shark. The script writes itself (this is both a compliment and a critique). If we’re including other killer-fish movies, though, this title would be swapped out for Joe Dante’s 1978 horror-comedy Piranha. Or even Alexandre Aja’s 2010 gore-soaked Piranha 3D.
4. The Shallows (2016): Before Blake Lively met Justin Baldoni, she faced an even greater foe: sharks! Like so many of his elevated-genre flicks, director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, Non-Stop) manages to keep the ridiculous concept focused and fun.
3. Open Water (2003): Couples’ therapy takes place in the depths of the ocean, after a husband and wife get accidentally abandoned during a scuba-diving excursion and find themselves being circled by predators.
2. Deep Blue Sea (1999): Better known as the one with “super-smart sharks,” or, alternately, the film in which Samuel L. Jackson delivers the greatest monologue of all time (before getting chewed in half).
1. Jaws (1975): Fifty years ago, Steven Spielberg ensured no one would ever again get into the water without at least thinking, even for a split second, about what might be lurking underneath the waves.
