Dangerous Animals
Theaters: When a surfer is abducted by a serial killer and held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he feeds her to the sharks.
Release date June 6, 2025
Violence D
Sexual Content D
Profanity D
Substance Use D
The MPAA rated Dangerous Animals R for strong bloody violent content/grisly images, sexuality, language and brief drug use.
Run Time: 93 minutes
Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) likes to live life on her own terms, which means focusing exclusively on surfing. Naturally, she lives out of a van and travels around Australia, following good waves and avoiding any personal attachments – including running out on Moses (Josh Heuston), a young man she realized she might actually like.
Unfortunately, Zephyr ran right into Bruce (Jai Courtney), an unhinged amateur filmmaker who likes to record himself feeding tourists alive to sharks. He abducted her and now she’s handcuffed to a cot inside his boat. Escape doesn’t seem likely, but the alternative – becoming shark food - is too grim to contemplate.
It’s a little on the nose to name a shark-feeding serial killer after the shark in Jaws, but this movie doesn’t aim for subtlety. Despite the gruesome murder methodology, most of the movie consists of people sitting nervously in handcuffs on the boat. There’s very little action - not that you’d know it from the score. The orchestra provides so many jump scares that I started tuning out. Most of the time, the only thing they accompanied was a shot change.
Then there’s the dialogue, which did not further endear the film to me, and the less said about it the better. It’s one of those movies that contains a fair bit of profanity, but never seems to find a natural-sounding way to curse. If the bloody violence and frequent profanity bother you, then you’re not going to be thrilled about the sexual content and brief drug use either.
Those little hitches aside, Dangerous Animals isn’t quite as bad as I’m making it sound. The film manages to build some legitimate tension and slap together some half-decent scares. Jai Courtney occasionally takes breaks from chewing on the scenery to give the sharks some screen time, which I appreciate, but I wish the balance had tended more towards the sharks. It’s a little easier to take them seriously.
Directed by Sean Byrne. Starring Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston. Running time: 93 minutes. Theatrical release June 6, 2025. Updated June 5, 2025
Keith Hawkes
Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.
Dangerous Animals is rated R by the MPAA for strong bloody violent content/grisly images, sexuality, language and brief drug use.
If you’re looking for aquatic creature features sans serial killers, try Jaws, The Meg, The Shallows, or Crawl.
Page last updated June 5, 2025
