DANGEROUS ANIMALS

Screening Room

June 6, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Last year Cannes boasted Ozploitation The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage as a wave rider who becomes unhinged when tested by locals at an Australian surf spot. This year, the festival saw Jai Courtney get his crazy on in a similarly willfully silly but entertaining horror-actioner that features surfers in the land down under.

Dangerous Animals, Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston, Sean Byrne — Mark Taylor/Vertigo Releasing

Premiering in Directors’ Fortnight, Sean Byrne’s video nasty stars Courtney as a salty seadog, Tucker, who trawls for female victims, not just fish, and gets off on feeding them to sharks while taping them with a camcorder. ‘So no-one knows you’re here?’ he asks a dopey backpacking couple who arrive at his Gold Coast boat looking for a day trip, and within ten minutes we’re treated to his bloody MO. Cut to feisty surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) who meets-cute with a local, Moses (Josh Heuston) before taking off for some dawn tubes and falling victim to Tucker’s abduction techniques. Will the surfer outsmart the psychopath aboard his rusting ship before the great whites circle for dinner time?

Courtney is clearly having great fun as a leering shark enthusiast with Mummy issues and an inexhaustible line of fishy analogies in a grindhouse-style film that has little truck with logic and a squeamish moment involving a thumb and a pair of handcuffs. Harrison makes good work of fighting for survival while maintaining perfect hair and the CG sharks chew on people inconsistently (yes to one struggling, splashing girl; no to another swimming, splashing girl).
It’s not designed to test the brain or bum, but if you like a brisk, nasty little horror that understands its genre and purpose, Dangerous Animals is decent bait.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of VIRTIGO RELEASING
Dangerous Animals premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival and is in cinemas now

Dangerous Animals, Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston, Sean Byrne

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