phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2025

Dangerous Animals



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2025
Runtime: 1h 38m
Country: Australia, USA, Canada
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: When Zephyr, a savvy and free-spirited surfer, is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer and held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: I bumped this up to 3 stars for Jai Courtney (who I don't normally like) as an excellent villain, and for a serial killer that uses sharks as a weapon. Otherwise, it's a pretty good cat-and-mouse thriller, though probably a little too long for my taste. There are only so many times Tom and Jerry can run in a circle before I want one of the to be be seriously injured.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Sean Byrne's "Dangerous Animals" is sharp in all the right places. It's an efficient, clever genre mash-up that works because of how well Byrne blocks its action, employs an old-fashioned score, and directs his actors to visceral performances. It's deceptively well-made; most will dismiss this "Jaws" meets "The Silence of the Lambs" flick as just another B-movie, but Byrne makes so many smart choices in every aspect of the production. After far too long a hiatus, the director of the excellent "The Loved Ones" and "The Devil's Candy" is back with another kind of summer movie, a surprising Cannes addition (and the first Australian film in the program in over a decade) that deftly maneuvers its ship through choppy waters to a thoroughly entertaining destination.


Katie Rife
Grade: B - Jai Courtney puts sharks to shame in the bloody blast Dangerous Animals

It helps that stars Jai Courtney and Hassie Harrison commit to their performances as physical opposites who share a Darwinian attitude towards life. Zephyr (Harrison) is a loner, a wanderer who lives out of her van and doesn't stick around for breakfast after a one-night stand with local real-estate agent Moses (Josh Heuston) at the beginning of the movie. (Initially a way to illustrate Zephyr's issues with intimacy, Moses eventually evolves into one of the film's more surprising characters.) There are a few throwaway lines to explain how this Texas girl ended up surfing in Australia, but as with Sharni Vinson's character in You're Next, it's how she behaves in an emergency that reveals the real Zephyr. She's small, but she's scrappy, and she's extremely persistent.