Jai Courtney is an actor who basically disappeared in recent years until now. He was notorious for picking projects that people either didn’t see, The Water Diviner, or weren’t done very well like A Good Time to Die Hard. He’s appeared in some big franchises like the Divergent franchise and worked with the biggest stars in Hollywood like Tom Cruise (Jack Reacher). It’s not that he hasn’t had his opportunities because he has.  His career hasn’t popped like his fellow Aussie Russell Crowe. Well, he’s got a comeback film, and it’s called Dangerous Animals.

Tucker (Jai Courtney) is a survivor of a shark attack when he was a kid. Ever since he’s been fascinated by the lions of the ocean. He ends up as the captain of his own survival experience, where he lets people get up close and personal with sharks. He puts them in a cage underwater and lures sharks to the people by throwing chum in the water. It’s quite the experience for most people. Courtney ‘s character gets a thrill out of hearing the screams and the adrenaline rush this gets from his customers.  He goes a little too far, though people end up dying at his, and whatever sharks happen to swim by.  It’s a bloody good time if you’re a shark or someone who loves seeing the sharks eat people alive. Or record them.

I’ve seen my share of horror films in my day. Two of the scariest were The Shining, where Jack Nicholson played the insane Jack Torrence, who tried to murder his family at the Outlook Hotel. Cape Fear, where Max Cady played by Robert DeNiro, wants to get revenge on the lawyer and his family because he didn’t give him a good defense in his trial fourteen years prior. DeNiro is off the chain as this character. Courtney gave me vibes of these two iconic horror characters from the past. They both seemed like they were having fun playing the character, and so did Courtney. 

Ever since Jaws, people have been afraid of going in the water. Sharks have become a good villain in films. The Shallows, 47 Meters Down, and Deep Blue Sea are a few that come to mind that have taken what Jaws did for fans and ran with it. This film, though, takes the shark horror genre and turns it on its head. No pun intended.  People love animals , but to love and study sharks the way this man did is a bit demented. He quotes stats to his victims about these majestic beautiful creatures as he says. All of it is just the punchline to the ultimate joke of being raised down and fed to the hungry Beasts. You can see it in his eyes he is completely off the deep end. 

With any horror movie, though, you have to have a protagonist, and that’s a character named Zephyr (Lassie Harrison). She’s a transient surfer who lives out of her van in Australia.  She just happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. As she’s preparing to get ahead of the crown at a beach she gets kidnapped by Courtney’s character an imprisoned on his boat waiting for the time where he wants to feed her to his pets, not really pets but he loves them like that. She’s a mysterious American who ran away from a bad life as an orphan here in the States. This is a bad combination for Courtney’s character because she’s a fighter.

With any horror movie, shark subgenre, or not, you can pick holes in the logic of the story. Why didn’t this character do this or that? People are always going to complain about something. This film has a few moments like that, but it’s more about just going with the flow of the story and not thinking too much about those types of things. There are contrivance in the story, but I didn’t care about them because I was having a blast watching Courtney be crazy and over the top. That was the draw of the movie for me. The plus was i got to see a newer actress I wasn’t familiar with in a fight for her life, and I loved her in the film. The two leads were a great yin and Yang. 

Dangerous Animals was a lot of fun, and I had a blast watching it. It’s the kind of film you can’t take too seriously or you’ll miss the point of it and the enjoyment that’ll come. The two leads are both fantastic. Courtney is completely off of the deep end, and Harrison is a newer actress. I’ll be keeping my eye on from now on. They were fantastic as the antagonist and protagonist. The setting was beautiful. The mix of over the top comedic moments and very dramatic horror moments were very well balanced.  This was one of my favorite movies of the year so far. Hopefully, this helps Courtney have a turnaround in his career. With a lot of summer movies out right now, here’s hoping people check this one out.

4 1/2 stars

Dan Skip Allen