Dangerous Animals
Dangerous Animals
Starring Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston, Ella Newton
Directed by Sean Byrne
Tucker (Jai Courtney) runs Tucker's Experience, a shark cage tourist attraction in Australia - but it's a front, as he lures customers to the middle of the ocean, kills any men, and kidnaps the women to use for his sick pleasure by offering them to the sharks as a sort of sacrifice after he himself was attacked by a shark at a young age. Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is a free-spirited surfer who lives out of her van and has no connections to anyone, until she meets hapless Moses (Josh Heuston) and the two share a night together - and then Zephyr is kidnapped by Tucker. Forced to survive, Zephyr must use all her cunning and wits to make it off Tucker's ship before she becomes the next meal for the sharks he feeds.
On paper it seems "Dangerous Animals" has a lot going for it - a charismatic serial killer, an isolated setting with little to no hope of rescue, a tough-as-nails protagonist, and deadly sharks. Yet, somehow, it all falls so incredibly flat (save for a passionate performance from Jai Courtney) and what you get is 98 minutes of boredom, filled with stupid decisions, repetitive moments and a conclusion you can see coming from several fathoms away. Each character is so thinly written they have nothing to offer (again, save for Courtney), and it follows every kidnap movie trope so closely if you've seen a few of these you'll know what not to do in the event you're kidnapped for real.
Jai Courtney hasn't had a lot of luck in film, and he continues down that path here, as he plays Tucker (a Mick Turner wannabe) who abducts and kills women by attaching them to a crane and lowering them into the ocean after spreading chum for the sharks to feed on. He does this because he sees sharks as God's messengers and must offer them sacrifice for keeping him alive, or something. I'm sure he gives a full explanation somewhere, but I was so bored I was playing on my phone for most of the movie, looking up every so often to make sure nothing was happening - and it wasn't. It's sad that I can predict every beat of this movie while not paying the slightest bit of attention because of how generic it was, and how disappointed I was in it (it's been garnering praise by critics and I fail to understand why).
Hassie Harrison (who is Jennifer Lawrence's long-lost twin sister even though no one knows it yet) plays Zephyr, your generic modern-day hippie: she's a nomad who roams the oceans in her van to catch the next big wave, has no job, no family, and no connections to anyone on land. She is a slave to no one, and has been trained by the streets (or, I guess, the ocean) to be tough-as-nails and a warrior in her own right. So she is the perfect fodder for Tucker as they go toe-to-toe in her quest for survival. It doesn't mean she's smart about it, as she tries on numerous occasions to escape only to be thwarted by Tucker again and again - so much so it felt like Groundhog's Day.
There's probably more to say here, but there really isn't. There's a love story between Zephyr and a young man named Moses who falls in love in one night and becomes an obsessed stalker (but here in a good way, as he's the only one who's actively trying to find her - but even then he does so in incredibly stupid ways), but that's about it. The rest is rinse and repeat of Zephyr finding different ways to escape and failing at every level until the final moment when you know what will happen. The biggest mystery is why so many critics like it - maybe I'm just jaded, maybe I don't find sharks scary, or maybe I'm tired of the typical kidnap movie tropes that they give us over and over...who knows?
The Score: D-
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