“Dangerous Animals” is by far one of the least serious films to show at the Cannes Film Festival, but it’s also one that’s way smarter and self-aware than it ever needed to be. It’s a horror film that takes the idea of murderous sharks, whose modern incarnations were long ago run into the ocean floor by movies swimming in the wake of the schlock hit that was “Sharknado,” and complicates them by tossing in a serial killer who is actually using the terrifyingly beautiful underwater creatures as his way of wreaking havoc on the world.
To put it more cheekily, imagine if “Jaws” was primarily built around the scenes on the boat, except it was being operated by even more of a maniac than Quint. Or if “Psycho” had the terrifying Bates Motel converted to set forth on the high seas. But one of the main reasons to see this film is Jai Courtney in rare form as a menacing murderer operating a tour boat as a way to abduct and kill unsuspecting tourists. Even though it doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of its broad genre beat and gets less interesting as it goes along, “Dangerous Animals” has plenty of good bones in the bloody chum that it throws out into the water.
Premiering Saturday at the festival in the Directors’ Fortnite sidebar, this all begins with seeing the most obviously murderous Australian man to ever live, Tucker (Courtney), luring two unsuspecting travelers onto his boat. He’s got a creepy charm that is screaming out that he is a serial killer, but this being a horror movie, we have to see what the killer can do by any means necessary. Following a misdirect about sending the duo deep into a cage to swim with sharks, Tucker cuts the throat of one and turns his knife on the other.
As we will soon see, he has other plans in store for her. We then get the most ridiculous needle drop and are introduced to the surfer Zephyr. Played with charisma to spare by Hassie Harrison, most known for her role in the canceled series “Tacoma FD,” she’s a loner who is just trying to keep as far from her past as possible and find that next big wave. Even when she briefly hooks up with the handsome local Moses, played by Josh Heuston of the recent series “Dune: Prophecy,” it’s always back to the surf before the break of dawn. Unfortunately, it’s there where she gets abducted by Tucker and taken aboard his boat.
The film then becomes less of a scare-a-minute horror and more a survival thriller where Zephyr will have to find a way to turn the tables on Tucker before the serial killer turns her into fish food. Directed by Sean Byrne and written by Nick Lepard, who notably penned the upcoming new Osgood Perkins’ horror film “Keeper,” it’s all rather confined in nature where the dread comes from the knowledge that, when day turns to night, Tucker is putting someone in the water. That is, only after he’s done drunkenly dancing about and having the time of his life.
Courtney, creepy and campy in one moment before becoming genuinely menacing in the next, is clearly also having a ball playing this part. While this doesn’t always translate to a great villain — there’s always the risk that you overplay things to such a degree that it becomes overly comic — this is one instance where it absolutely does as he’s able to sufficiently strike the balance between tones. He’s always going for it and, when juxtaposed against the more effectively grounded work of Harrison, it gradually builds into being an engaging battle between the two that keeps its head mostly above water. Even when the narrative can risk falling into repetition and struggles to offer up new complications, it’s the scene-to-scene tension that keeps it moving.
Some of this comes down to how the film demonstrates a great deal of restraint when it comes to the sharks and, smartly, keeps them mostly lurking out of sight. The cover of night also helps to hide some of the less-than-convincing visual effects that ultimately drag things down a bit later when they emerge into the brightness of the sun. It’s in these moments where the effectiveness of the whole affair nearly goes belly up, but you still go along with it because of the credibility the film accumulates up until this ending. That there is a genuinely clever current running through it about the cinematic history of sharks and the fear they hold in our imagination is just a little added bonus that offers a bit more to chew on.
It’s a mashup between the serial killer thriller and the schlocky shark horror, though it’s the strength of the former that makes this one sing.
“Dangerous Animals” swims into theaters on June 6.
