Director – Sean Byrne – 2025 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 98m
*****
A free-spirited girl surfer must outwit the shark tour operator who has kidnapped her and whose idea of looking after customers is feeding them to the sharks – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 6th
Greg (Liam Greinke) invites Brit backpacker Heather (Ella Newton) to join him on a shark swim. So, off they go to Tucker (Jai Courtney), who runs shark-seeing tours using his boat. As in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), you go in the cage, the cage goes in the water, the sharks are outside the cage. Heather has second thoughts, but the couple go for it, which turns out to be an amazing experience. You won’t believe what happens next. Greg certainly doesn’t. (Be advised: some online trailers give the game away. Thankfully, Vertigo’s teaser trailer, below, doesn’t.)
Free-spirited surfer Zephyr (Hessie Harrison) lives out of her van and one night indulges in passion there with yuppie Moses (Josh Heuston) parked outside his house, swiftly driving off afterwards before he has had a chance to take their relationship further, which is a pity from his point of view since he feels some sort of deeper connection. So he goes looking for her van, and finds it. But she’s nowhere to be seen… and her van is being towed away. He talks to the police, but since he doesn’t know her surname, they can’t do much.
Zephyr has been kidnapped by Tucker, who is clearly not quite the friendly shark tour guide he initially seemed. He is obsessed with the creatures, having survived being bitten by one of them as a child. She wakes in his ship’s hold, cuffed to a bed near to another, to which is likewise cuffed the traumatised Heather.
Tucker has his own agenda – ascertaining that none of his intended victims have people who know where they are, he straps them into a chair hanging on a lanyard and lowers them kicking and screaming into shark-infested waters, sometimes watched by the next victim in the queue and always filmed by his trusty video camera. Like extras outside the story of Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983), they will live on as VHS tapes in a personal collection, each tape augmented by a lock of the relevant girl’s hair.
As Moses searches for, and later finds himself imprisoned alongside Zephyr on Tucker’s boat, a cleverly choreographed game of cat and mouse ensues.
A spirited Australian production, this works thanks primarily to a cleverly plotted screenplay which appears to have completely energized cast and crew. Director Byrne is thoroughly focused on delivering a rattling good yarn and has cast his film well.
Courtney makes for a suitably cheerful, if deranged, villain intent on building his victim video collection. Harrison delivers the required amount of oomph for the gutsy, take no nonsense nomad; Newton is appropriately hesitantly reserved in the English manner until she lets rip as the scream queen. Heuston is just right as the male romantic lead, in a well-balanced script where one woman is scared shirtless while the feisty other one is determined to outwit the killer. Even the gone-soon-after-the-start Greinke leaves a favourable impression, as too does Rob Carlton as Dave, the grizzled old guy on the harbour boat next to Tucker’s who you assume is in on Tucker’s little game – until you realise you may have misjudged him, and he actually isn’t.
This home-grown Aussie effort makes maximum use of its meagre resources, which includes the city of Gold Coast and a good deal of first-rate underwater photography featuring a shiver of sharks. It’s the sort of audience-pleaser with which you can’t really go wrong.
Dangerous Animals is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, June 6th.
Teaser Trailer: