Studio:   IFC Films/Shudder
Director: Sean Byrne
Writer:   Nick Lepard
Producer: Chris Ferguson, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Pete Shilaimon, Mickey Liddell, Troy Lum, Andrew Mason
Stars:    Hassie Harrison, Josh Heuston, Rob Carlton, Ella Newton, Liam Greinke, Jai Courtney

Review Score:

Summary:

A young surfer becomes the latest target of a serial killer who uses sharks to murder his kidnapped victims.

Synopsis:

Vacationing in Australia, young British tourists Heather and Greg book a private shark-diving experience with Bruce Tucker. After the dive, Bruce reveals himself as a serial killer when he suddenly stabs Greg to death and captures Heather.

Young real estate agent Moses Markley notices Zephyr, a resourceful vagabond who lives in her van, stealing ice cream from a convenience store. Desperate for a ride back to his disabled vehicle, Moses blackmails Zephyr into giving him a lift. On the drive, Moses and Zephyr unexpectedly bond over their shared love of surfing and take a mutual romantic interest in one another. The two of them spend the night at Moses’s place, but Zephyr sneaks out before dawn to go surfing alone.

Via text, Moses invites himself to join Zephyr and she accepts. Following an earlier encounter in a beach parking lot, Bruce suddenly uses a plastic bag to render Zephyr unconscious from behind before bringing her back to his boat as a captive.

At daybreak, Moses finds Zephyr’s van abandoned in the beach parking lot. Moses tries calling Zephyr’s phone and hears it ringing inside her vehicle.

Zephyr recovers to find herself shackled to a metal bedframe alongside Heather. Names scrawled on a wall indicate a long line of kidnapped women who became Bruce’s victims.

Moses sees Zephyr’s van being towed away. Suspicious of the circumstances, Moses reports Zephyr’s disappearance to the police, but his claim isn’t taken seriously.

Using the underwire from Heather’s bra, Zephyr tries picking the lock on her handcuffs. However, both women quickly fall unconscious from drugged water they unknowingly drank.

Restrained to a seat on the boat’s main deck, Zephyr is forced to watch helplessly as Bruce uses a camcorder to record Heather being lowered into the water and mauled by sharks. Afterward, Bruce puts a lock of Heather’s hair with the videocassette he just taped and adds it to his extensive collection of trophies.

Zephyr later arms herself with a broken bucket handle she uses to attack Bruce and briefly escape. She then distresses Bruce by throwing his camcorder into the water. Zephyr tries to swim away, but she falls unconscious from Bruce’s drugs again and he pulls her out of the ocean.

Moses identifies Bruce’s branded pickup truck from surveillance footage of the parking lot where Zephyr disappeared. While Bruce goes out to purchase a new camcorder, Moses drives to the boat dock listed for Bruce’s business. Hearing her muffled cries, Moses breaks into the boat and frees Zephyr.

Bruce returns in time to violently attack Moses. Gaining the upper hand in their struggle, Moses nearly chokes out Bruce until he is knocked out from behind by Bruce’s concerned neighbor Dave. Just as Dave realizes Zephyr is holding a woman captive, Bruce kills him and feeds Dave to sharks.

Zephyr is again restrained to a seat and forced to watch Bruce record as Moses is lowered into shark-infested waters. Zephyr instructs Moses to remain still, which he does, and the circling bull sharks swim away. Disappointed, Bruce raises up Moses and stabs him multiple times to chum the water with blood. Bruce lowers Moses again, but he is forced to bring his two captives back to their quarters when he sees a helicopter overhead.

To escape her handcuffs, Zephyr breaks her thumb. She then gnaws off her thumb and uses it as a distraction to momentarily trap Bruce in the room with Moses. A subsequent fight leads to a lengthy pursuit that results in Bruce recapturing Zephyr.

Moses is restrained to the chair and forced to watch as Bruce lowers Zephyr into the water. Zephyr manages to get free, stop her hand from bleeding, and remain still until an approaching shark passes by her. She then sneaks back aboard the boat and fires a harpoon into Bruce’s chest. After he falls into the water, a shark mauls Bruce while his camera is still recording from the deck. Using a signal flare, Zephyr eventually manages to flag down a passing party boat that circles back to rescue her and Moses as they begin rekindling their romance.

Review:

“Dangerous Animals” wasn’t at the top of my list when I was deciding on a movie to watch. It wasn’t even on the list, as the prospect of Jai Courtney headlining “yet another” shark movie, even one in which the sharks aren’t the movie’s main murderer, didn’t sound particularly promising at all.

“Bring Her Back” was my first choice. I hemmed and hawed on that one, however. Danny and Michael Philippou’s previous film, “Talk to Me,” was heavy and heady, and divided opinions on “Bring Her Back” suggested their sophomore feature would also take a fair amount of effort to dissect and mull over.

Something similar happened with my second choice, “28 Years Later.” Taking its two-hour runtime into account, then factoring all of the arguments and animosity over the movie’s perceived politics or whatever, that too seemed like a hefty undertaking and potential courtship of controversy I wasn’t eager to bite into just yet.

Since I had recently taken time off to travel and attend San Diego Comic-Con, I felt the best way of easing back into the groove of regularly reviewing new movies would be to pick something simpler instead. That’s when the prospect of Jai Courtney headlining “yet another” shark movie now sounded like something I could knock out without having to dial up my attention span to full power. And, “Dangerous Animals” served up pretty much what I ordered: a fast-food meal of moderately entertaining suspense that’s easy to eat, if relatively plain-tasting, in a quick 95-minute wrapper.

“Dangerous Animals” gets its obvious setup scene out of the way instantly. A pair of young British tourists takes their Australian adventure to another level when they book a private shark-diving expedition with Bruce, a sketchy boat captain who turns out to be a serial killer. The catch is, he dunks helpless victims into the water and lets sharks do a lot of the dirty work for him, which he’s all too happy to have happen once he discovers this duo’s families have no idea where they went.

The film’s real heroine, Zephyr, is just as much of a vagabond, although a rough upbringing taught her how to be independently resourceful. She lives in her van, but she’s less of a transient and more of a free spirit who spends her time surfing for thematic reasons she divulges when “Dangerous Animals” slips in one of its tender timeouts.

We start getting to know Zephyr when she meets Moses, a conveniently attractive man who spots Zephyr pinching a pint of Ben & Jerry’s from 7-11 by hiding it in a Slurpee cup. It’s hard to imagine $6 worth of stolen ice cream creating much of a commotion with the clerk, let alone the cops. Nevertheless, Moses uses the opportunity to blackmail Zephyr into giving him a ride back to his brokedown vehicle. Whether she gets over the threat quite quickly or just finds Moses too handsome, the two of them bond over their shared love of surfing and John Fogerty music, then end up hooking up back at Moses’s place as they spark a romantic interest in one another.

Moses and Zephyr’s atypical dynamic puts an interesting foot forward for “Dangerous Animals” by not making them longtime lovebirds who shout panicked lines like, “Get away from her!” at the killer. The couple parts ways after Zephyr sneaks out in the wee hours of the morning, so the premise isn’t quite “how far would you go to rescue a one-night stand from a deadly madman?” But Moses’s desire to see Zephyr again puts him in a unique position where he partially plays white knight down the line while Zephyr remains free to (mostly) rely on her own cleverness to combat Bruce after she’s kidnapped and brought back to his boat as shark bait.

Jai Courtney’s Bruce could use a generous shakeup to his stereotype. Finally tapped to exploit the difficult-to-like persona that’s perpetually prevented him from breaking out in bigger titles including “Terminator Genisys” and “Suicide Squad,” Courtney has the bad guy basics down pat to commit a functionally “fine” antagonist to the screen. Then the movie makes him more cartoonish by saddling him with the well-worn scene of his psycho slugging booze, dancing in his underwear, and singing along to a signature song. It’s tough to tell if his recreation of Buffalo Bill’s “Goodbye Horses” lip-synch intends to be a deliberate parody or purely a straight ripoff.

With onscreen victims able to be counted on one hand, the body count isn’t especially high. Most of the movie consists of Zephyr’s repeated escape attempts that always result in recapture mixed with slower scenes of Moses’s “what happened to that girl from last night?” investigation. The two threads eventually intersect, of course, and there are a couple of decently gruesome moments along the way to quench the thirst of horror hounds itching for shark-chomping action.

“Dangerous Animals” weighs itself down with too many explanatory speeches and repetitive beats where someone gets knocked unconscious as a segue to the next scene. Yet when I circle back on why I pressed Play in the first place, it’d be silly to slash the film when it’s exactly the mid-level midnighter anyone should expect it to be. Although the major arcs follow formula (for example, take a wild guess as to how the villain meets his demise), the movie does some small things differently enough that every detail isn’t entirely predictable. And when you want something that isn’t emotionally exhausting, metaphorically contemplative, or charged with social commentary, sometimes a Jai Courtney-headlined shark movie finds a safe spot as a suitably serviceable thriller.

Review Score: 65