Dangerous Animals
It's the summer of sharks, again. I mean, it pretty much is every year, where more people go swimming and, inevitably, more shark attacks happen. Here's one for example, where a 7-year-old boy was chomped on in French Polynesia. Of course, despite there being barely any reference to what kind of shark was responsible, the headline photo is of a great white, which, while an obvious predator, is never seen in the relevant waters. What a shock.
Of course, this is all because of "Jaws," which turned fifty this summer. As we all know, "Jaws" is not only responsible for demonising sharks in general, it also put a target on the white shark's head that the species took decades to recover from. "Dangerous Animals," the new movie from Australian filmmaker Sean Byrne, who directed the wonderfully nasty 2009 horror "The Loved Ones," features a great white in a key sequence, but it's leagues away from the monster that Spielberg created.
"Dangerous Animals" stars Jai Courtney as Tucker, the real villain of the story. Tucker is a boat captain who takes tourists out to dive with sharks in cages, but what he really likes to do is kidnap young women and film them being lowered into the water and devoured by sharks, often killing their partners and throwing them into the ocean so the fish will go into a frenzy. We see this with English girl Heather, whose companion is stabbed in the chest and kicked into the water by Tucker.
Meanwhile, semi-famous surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) has arrived on the Gold Coast and ends up meeting and fucking a local named Moses. These are probbaly some of the worst scenes, especially as the dude playing Moses is super-annoying and it's all a bit cringe as the kids say. However, Tucker captures Zephyr and she wakes up in the cargo hold chained to a bed while Heather lies next to her, in some kind of fucked-up dorm. Later, Tucker forces Zephyr to watch as Heather is killed by bull sharks, and afterwards we see he always makes a lure out of strands of the unfortunate individual's hair, which is then inserted into the VHS case of the relevant victim.
Tucker is toxic masculinity at its worst. Thankfully, Byrne and writer Nick Lepard don't overexplain him, his basic backstory is that he sees sharks as the real gods after being nearly taken by one as a child. But he's also a perennial loner who sees women only as literal fish food - it's interesting and relieving that while Tucker is a huge sexist bastard, there are no dips into sexual violence that a lesser film might try. Courtney is fabulous as Tucker, a showy big-mouthed psychopath who is as much as force as the sharks, and who eats cereal in his cabin while watching back his home movies.
Of course he's met his match in Zephyr, who makes various attempts to escape that nearly work, but never quite come off. If you saw "The Loved Ones," you'll know how wincingly gruesome Byrne can be, and there's a moment involving Zephyr and her thumb that is several stages of horrifying and gross. Comparatively, the sharks are fairly civilised, although seeing Heather both during and post-attack is a nasty fright.
But this is the point. Sharks are animals, we think we can predict their behaviour, but nature is always one step ahead of our arrogance and hubris. Look at the controversial diver Ocean Ramsey, who is often seen swimming with (and touching) the stereotypical "maneaters," and seeing her videos which she pretends to be all about conservation, you're just waiting for the moment where one of them snaps.
"Dangerous Animals" is a film about victims, but it's also about survival. Obviously as a straight survival horror, but going deeper, about people being used as victims who are constantly at risk of being snuffed out by man. This comes to a head in a beautiful scene where Zephyr finds herself in the water and face to face with a gigantic white shark. The setup is absolutely wonderful, with the animal approaching Zephyr from afar, showing not only the vastness of the ocean the pair inhabit, but also the difference in size. The idea of a shark appearing from the darkness of the ocean is a common one, but here Byrne has two victims face to face sharing a common ground. He even goes so far as to show a close-up of the shark's eye that shows that white sharks don't have black eyes. They have dark blue eyes, and once visible they immediately display the animal in a new light. A beautiful light.
Byrne's film is fantastic. It's tense as anything, it's gnarly, and it's sometimes blackly funny, especially with the standout Courtney performance. I have a few gripes; the Moses actor, the score is maybe too traditional, and the way Tucker finally gets his comeuppance is perhaps a bit showy. However, it is a recontextualisation of a classic "Shark Week" image, which is a wonderful touch. Considering "Jaws" ripoffs are still pumped out monthly, it's great to see an intelligent film that treats sharks as the beautiful animals they are - it's men that are the dangerous animals here.
Maybe sharks are gods after all.
