With a strong script and even stronger acting, Dangerous Animals is a solid survival thriller.
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Frequent readers and listeners are probably aware that animal attack movies are pretty popular in the Danielson household. Specifically shark movies. For whatever reason, my lovely wife Sharon really gravitates towards said movies, and I'll watch anything, which means we've seen all kinds of water-based animal movies with giant teeth ranging from literal meth gators to classics like Jaws. Which brings me to Dangerous Animals, a survival thriller where sharks are the least dangerous predator on-screen...
The Setup
The movie centers around a wandering American named Zephyr who lives out of her van in Australia, drifting from one surfing location to another. Unfortunately for Zeph, her hobby puts her on a crash course with Tucker, a local serial killer and shark attack survivor who likes to capture and break down young women before feeding them to sharks. Can Zeph survive before Tucker completes his sickening ritual again?
There's an awful lot I like about Dangerous Animals. It's well-paced, extremely well-acted, and thinks up novel ways to keep it's baseline survival horror scenario interesting.
All of which starts with our lead character Zephyr or Zeph.
An Excellent Protagonist
At first glance Zephyr is a classic female protagonist stereotype. An emotionally closed off and acerbic woman who avoids connections due to some baggage in her past. This isn't necessarily a problem, it's an archetype that works for all kinds of characters regardless of gender. However, the female version of this character is often pulled in from their emotional isolation via trauma or a man (which stinks).
But Zeph is far from a damsel and also has good reasons for lacking roots. From the second she ends up in captivity, Zeph is looking for ways to escape, incapacitate her captor, and get help. She also works as an emotionally cheerleader for anyone else who ends up in Tucker's clutches, doing her best to keep up their morale or keep them focused.
No matter which other parties get involved, this is ultimately a battle between Zeph and Tucker.
Likewise, Zeph gives just backstory to explain why she behaves the way she does and also where she learned her survival skills. Apparently she was a foster kid (which would explain the comfort of jumping from place to place) and sadly as is often the case for foster kids, she's been through some mistreatment. Nice clean explanation for why she is how she is and why her survival instinct is so strong.
So it's incredibly gratifying to watch her bond with her fellow captives or watch her assumptions (i.e. no one cares about me but me) get upended. Hassie Harrison also gives us the full breadth of this character ranging from defiant, sarcastic, but also despondent and terrified in other moments. It's a complete performance. And then we've got Tucker.
A Terrifying Villain
I saw at least one sentence long review of this movie that said these are the kinds of roles Jai Courtney should've been doing all along (aka the modern Gerard Butler approach). Avoid the pretty boy stuff and dive into some real shit bird characters. And I completely agree.
Courtney has the natural physicality of a burly bruiser, which makes him a good, consistent physical threat to the women he captures. Like a grown up frat bro and how he seems to relish how much can physically intimidate and dominate the people around him. I also like how he could be seen as a dark mirror of Zephyr.
Because he definitely earned some fame and infamy when he was younger due to the shark attack, but instead of trying to move on, he made it a literal serial killer level fetish about man and nature and predators.
I also really like that both Zeph and the movie are constantly interrupting his speeches to reinforce as if to tell the audience "no you giant idiots this isn't some kind of smart guy who went astray. He's an idiot and sadist who watches women get killed for his own pleasure."
The other thing that makes this particular setup and villain so scary is the inherent isolation and violation of trust. Like take the dark joke of "because of the implication" from It's Always Sunny and twist that into an actual survival horror movie.
I always like it when movies like this make their villains irredeemable pieces of shit. Makes any pushback much more satisfying and every failure more heartbreaking.
Limited Location Moves and Countermoves
Another reason I like this setup so much is that it inherently requires some ingenuity to maintain tension for its 90 minute runtime. And Dangerous Animals manages this by making the entire movie a series of moves and countermoves by Zeph and Tucker. Initially Zeph might be contained via one method of restraint, but if she's able to get out at least once, because she's smart and resourceful, Tucker is just smart enough to avoid making the same mistake twice and will find a counter the next time.
It means that by the film's end it really feels like both parties have played all of their cards or used every trick they can imagine.
The Verdict: A Lean, Mean Survival Thriller
With a strong script and even stronger acting, Dangerous Animals is a solid survival thriller.
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