Dangerous Animals 4K 2025

Released in the height of summer, Dangerous Animals is, if not a breath of fresh air, then certainly a splash of ice-cold water: an almost classic shark horror film, where Captain Boomerang takes the lead role among the toothy creatures. Oh, sorry, Jai Courtney. A nice guy from a suicide squad turns into one of those creatures himself: it turns out that it's not enough that there are sharks swimming in the ocean, someone has to deliver people to those sharks. Voila! A traditional horror movie about jaws becomes a thriller about a maniac.

At the center of the plot is the lonely beauty Zephyr, a long-legged, playful blonde who prefers to be alone with the waves rather than try to exist on land among people. You immediately warm to her, which makes it all the more frightening to watch as the big, bearded Bruce Tucker drags her into his lair and chains her up. Okay, there will be someone else to get attached to in the frame, but let's move on.

Nothing special seems to be happening in the frame: the maniac caught her, the maniac chained her up, the maniac tortured her, the maniac killed her. But, as is traditional, the main victim turns out to be a person with a strong thirst for life, and that's where the most interesting part begins. Every frame is juicy, whether it's red blood, the azure sea, or pretty surfers. The soundtrack is awesome, you can leave Shazam on for the whole movie. But the main thing is those moments when the characters are on the edge, and you have to press yourself into your seat and hold your breath.

Honestly, Dangerous Animals doesn't invent anything new for the genre, but rather leaves the established boundaries behind and crosses into three different genres at once: survival, maniacal thriller, and shark horror. There's a little bit of everything here, so you won't get bored.

By the way, director Sean Byrne isn't particularly active: he shoots something once every 10 years and then disappears. He clearly does it for love, not for money. And if The Death Gifts was an unusual horror film about obsession, then his debut film, The Beloved, is a continuous, bloody, survival-themed trash film, which, in general, opened my eyes to a) the strangeness of Australian films and b) the charm of trash horror films. I recommend it to fans of the genre.