The horror movie owes sharks an apology. Despite what countless scenes of ominous blue fins cutting through the water have led us to believe, humans are much more of a threat to sharks than they are to us. The “Hostel” director Eli Roth even made a nonfiction movie making this argument, but no documentary can compete with a suspenseful cinematic blood bath.
Enter Sean Byrne, an Australian director with a taste for the unhinged, whose viscerally violent debut, “The Loved Ones,” conflated the prom-night revenge of “Carrie” with the family dinner of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” His new effort, “Dangerous Animals,” is another 1970s horror mash-up, this time combining the serial killer and shark movie subgenres into a trashy good time. Byrne is at his most articulate with visual language, flipping the script on a famous Spielberg shot of dangling legs underwater. Early on, he takes us out with tourists to the sea and shows us that underwater perspective, but this time we’re looking at sharks, not humans, who, this movie suggests, are the real predators.
It’s hardly the only nod to “Jaws.” Even the maniac at its center, the roguish tour guide Captain Tucker, played with charismatic gusto by Jai Courtney, looks a little like Richard Dreyfuss from that movie if he were on a steady diet of steroids. After a traumatic event in childhood, Tucker has taken to abducting tourists, locking them up on his boat and theatrically feeding them to sharks, all while filming these set pieces, beefing up an impressive collection of VHS snuff films. At one point, this maniac/indie director tells us he likes horror movies, but he didn’t need to.
It’s an outlandish premise that inevitably leads to some dopey, implausible places. Byrne’s previous movies got down in the grimy muck. This one is glossier. Everyone speaks in quips and movie quotes. And no one has an ounce of flab. This is a horror movie about horror movies made by people who seem to have spent more time observing horror movies than the real world. Making this work requires wit, the right tone and a ruthless sense of pace. Byrne manages all three with a sure hand.
His main asset is an old-fashioned charmer of a villain. A massive actor with a roughneck accent that should put horror fans in mind of “Wolf Creek,” Courtney is instantly intimidating. But he’s got an obsessive quality that is almost poignant, adding a hint of vulnerability to an otherwise cartoonish character. This is the kind of murderous psycho who takes a dance break. He eventually meets his match with Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a hardened surfer with intimacy issues. While this movie has fewer gross-outs than Byrne’s previous work, they do arrive, driven by Harrison’s feral performance.
The movie starts quick, hits a nice clip, but runs ashore at the end. Horror fans will forgive a preposterous monster as long as the kills pay off in escalating shocks and a big finale. “Jaws” got this right. And to be fair, despite giving sharks a bad reputation, it didn’t exactly go easy on humanity.
Dangerous Animals
Rated R for damage done by sharp, ferocious teeth, both shark and human. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.
Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times and writes a column about comedy.
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