Sharks are a thing. Seems like every year we get at least one shark oriented horror movie. Last year there was a critically well received one called Under Paris (check the review we did on it here.) This year we got Dangerous Animals. And for me, it snuck in under the radar. I literally hadn’t heard anything about this movie until I saw it as a newly added option on Shudder.

This opens with a couple engaging a man, Tucker, to take them on a shark tank excursion. She is a bit uncertain about it, but Tucker eases her concerns and off they go. Right off the bat, I was watching people get in a cage and being lowered and surrounded by sharks… and thinking those people are nuts! I don’t think anything could convince me to do a shark tank. I don’t feel like it’s a spoiler in any way telling you this doesn’t end well. Tucker seems sketchy as hell. So after the couple exit the tank safely it isn’t really a surprise that Tucker whips out a knife and stabs the guy a couple times before pushing him back in the water for the sharks to consume. Cue the opening credits!

The movie slows down after this though as we are introduced to Zephyr and Moses. Two random surfers who meet in a gas station and connect instantly. Some good character development happens here with them and I feel safe to say we actually care a bit about who they are. Until she bails on him to go for a midnight surf. Alone.

They do text a bit and we can see she regrets bailing and almost invites him to join her. But then Tucker sees an opportunity and jumps on it, capturing Zephyr. 

An interesting thing to note here is that this movie takes place in Australia. Tucker has a thick accent and at times is hard to understand, which is unfortunate. But I had immediate Wolf Creek vibes as this movie started. As a side note, I haven’t seen any movies set in Australia that make me feel safe and want to go there. Granted, I tend to watch a lot of horror movies. But Wolf Creek (and a few others) have taught me it isn’t a good idea to go about on land in Australia, and now this movie tells me not to go on a boat! I guess it’s ok to fly over. 

So we have Moses concerned about Zephyr just disappearing. We have Zephyr who wakes up handcuffed to a bed with a random girl handcuffed to a bed across from her. The other girl is Heather from the opening scene. Tucker didn’t kill her, just has kept her prisoner for an undetermined length of time. Tucker comes in on the two women as Zephyr is in the process of trying to escape. A doomed idea as he gave them drugged water and both women become unconscious within a minute of Tucker leaving. When they wake up, Zephyr is in some sort of metal chair restraining her and Heather is in a harness hooked up to the winch used to move the shark cage. Tucker has a tripod and old video camera set up that he uses to record Heather’s last moments. Those moments come from him chumming the water and then lowering her into the chum laced ocean as Zephyr is forced to watch. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Moses is trying to figure things out because he doesn’t believe Zephyr simply ran away (a dumb thought really, as she literally ran away from him the night they met after having sex.) With little more than an idea and a whim, Moses manages to track Zephyr to Tucker’s boat. His daring rescue attempt is quite thrilling, yet results merely in him being captured and handcuffed to the bed Heather had occupied. 

Believe it or not, I’m about to get spoilery here. I know, you are thinking I have already been there. And you are correct, except that this is gonna be a deeper dive.

There are two terrible moments in this movie. One is when Tucker has Zephyr in the chair and Moses in the harness about to dip into the ocean and there is a messy dismembered body on the deck near them. He suddenly notices a helicopter approaching his boat and declares that the fun is gonna have to wait a bit. We next see Zephyr and Moses back in the beds handcuffed, and then Tucker watching nervously as the helicopter passes by. The problem here is that there is absolutely no way he could wrangle both of them downstairs and hide the body in the very short period of time it would take that copter to be over his ship. Why does this matter? Just because it was silly. Had he taped their mouths to silence them and then thrown tarps over them, it would have made more sense. Or had it been a boat on the horizon which would have given him the time to secret them below deck. But the copter was just a strange choice. And it pulled me out of the movie. 

I’m gonna cheat and add another before I get to my conclusion. There is a random deranged dance scene with Tucker in a robe and undewear. I get the idea behind showing his crazy to a degree. But the trouble I have is that this just feels like a retread of the Buffalo Bill dance scene in Silence of the Lambs. Which was also a bit of a retread of the Francis Dollarhyde In-A-Gada-Da-Vita scene from Manhunter. Both iconic moments in movies, and this felt purely like trying to push that idea into this movie. I think it would have been better without it. 

But for the big one in my mind. This movie literally lasted about a minute too long. The actual ending of it was bad. Like horrible. It seemed like they wanted a happy ending here and tacked one on. Moses has passed out after having lost a ton of blood, and he is apparently dead, until Zephyr tells him that he is a reason for her to have something to look forward to. A man that she barely knows, but this revelation from her revives him and he is ok. Fade to black. Backing up 30 seconds though, Zephyr had wound up in the water and  manages to save herself climbing back on the boat, leading to her happy ending with Moses. But backing up about three minutes, Zephyr had shot Tucker with a harpoon gun, knocking him into the water where he gets eaten by the shark. The same shark that looked at Zephyr and let her live (dammit, that bugged me too, because the idea that a predator chooses to eat the bad guy but let the final girl live is just silly.) The moment of the shark eating Tucker was silly, practically ripped from a Sy-Fy movie. But as the shark swims away with Tucker, and Moses is drooped “dead” in the chair, Zephyr looks down and sees the line for the harpoon tangled about her leg. And then whooooosh…. she is in the water. The shark swimming away as it submerges. She disappears below the water, and then the surface turns calm. And this. Right here. This should have been the ending. It was a great moment. And a terribly dark ending. It should have been the ending. This was a powerful potential ending where nihilism rules the day. 

It’s not the first time I’ve watched a movie and thought it went a minute too long. American Werewolf in Paris was an ok movie, but the last two minutes or so ruined it for me. When I rewatched it, I simply stopped at the point where it was still an ok movie. With this movie, stopping at the point where everyone is dead becomes a much better ending. Not exactly a happy ending, but that ending made me happier than the one they actually used.

I’m giving this 9 stars. I really liked it. Honestly, had it ended a minute earlier, this would have been a Gold star review. Even with my couple other gripes. This is a movie I will be recommending to anyone I talk to.