'Dangerous Animals': Man or Bear... or Shark?

Fifty years ago, on June 20, 1975 , cinema changed forever. And so did the relationship with the sea of millions of vacationing bathers around the world. First, because it was the seed of the blockbuster , a box-office smash that planted the seed for sagas , sequels, and the hunger to make a lot of money from movies: $260 million in the United States alone, a figure unimaginable until then. Second, because it played with humankind's worst fears , real monsters, and planted them in a context of everyday possibility. Already in its test screenings, Steven Spielberg , its director, knew that Jaws would be a hit. "As soon as one of the first scenes, in which the boy dies on the raft, ended, a man sitting in the front row got up and ran out, heading towards where Spielberg was following the screening. When he reached the lobby, the man vomited on the carpet ; then he went to the bathroom and returned to his seat. The director later said: 'At that moment I knew the film would be a hit!'" Peter Biskind recounts in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: The Generation That Changed Hollywood (Anagrama, 2004).

The Jaws saga had several installments, some more successful than others. It also had second cousins from other countries, blatant copies, such as the Mexican Tintorera (1977), by René Cardona Jr. Or the Italian L'Ultimo Squalo , by Enzo Castellari , which was distributed in Spain as Jaws 3 , to take advantage of Spielberg's success and before the multinationals could crush the rogues, which forced the title of the third original to be changed.

Then came big-budget homages like Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea (1999) and low-budget parodies like Anthony C. Ferrante’s Sharknado (2013), which also became a series, featuring tornadoes carrying sharks inland. China has also produced its own shark IP, The Meg (2018), and in the realm of delirium we find sharks versus crocosaurs, dinoskulls and two- and three-headed chondrichthyans.

The latest offering comes from the refreshing waters of Australia and boasts a quality label from the Directors' Fortnight at the last Cannes Film Festival . Has Cannes lowered its standards, or has Sean Byrne's Dangerous Animals managed to give a new lease on life to a more than overused genre? A bit of both. On the one hand, Cannes seems to want to shake off its classist label at a time when new generations are embracing cultural relativism and more popular, mainstream content . On the other hand, Sean Byrne has taken inspiration from the viral social media debate "man or bear" —in which women are asked whether, during a solitary walk through a forest, they would prefer to encounter a man or a bear—to merge two everyday terrors: serial killers and sharks. Dangerous Animals reframes the question: man or bear... or shark?

The answer is an entertaining film that borrows tropes from both genres and chooses as its protagonist a scream queen , Zephyr ( Hassie Harrison ), who represents the most extreme form of the independent woman: she is a homeless surfer (living in a trailer), without a family and looking for sex without commitment. She is the feminist totem of the neoconservative man's nightmares. She is the coolest version of the cat lady . And the entire film is sustained by that tension and that balance between the critique of contemporary individualism and the traditional couple. In between, a rather crazy serial killer: Bruce Tucker ( Jai Courtney ) is a sailor -also a solitary- who organizes tourist trips to see sharks, those with underwater cages, and who hides a somewhat criminal hobby: using his victims as bait.

Zephyr spends her days surfing the waves , from beach to beach, from bed to bed. Until one day, after refusing to stay for a flirt's post-coital breakfast, Moses ( Josh Heuston ), who is emotionally attached to her, runs into Tucker, who kidnaps her and takes her out to sea. Why has Tucker chosen her? Because he's been watching her for weeks and, since she has no home, no friends, no boyfriends, no family and no bills to pay, no one will miss her . Because Bruce Tucker, in his private life, could step out of a Brian de Palma film or playfully cumming with Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Although the sexual component of Tucker's paraphilia is not overly emphasized, it is understood that it is his sexual frustration that drives him to murder : he only gets aroused by snuff films that he records himself with a mini DVD. Jai Courtney, on the outside, is the epitome of the hairy, testosterone-fueled macho man. On the inside, his repressed, party-loving side.

The first half of the film is the most conventional. Like Spielberg in Jaws , Sean Byrne prefers to leave the sharks in the shadows rather than show them in the full light of day, and it's not until the final third that the film really goes wild and becomes a bloody, frenetic survival horror . Before then, the film explores the similarities between the victim and the executioner: both are wounded animals, scarred by life , except one protects herself from the world and derives her disappointments from a life without emotional contact, while the other... kills people.

Shelley Farthing-Dawe's cinematography also elevates a film with the nature of a B-movie, with some credibility issues, and whose greatest asset is its villain. Dangerous Animals is refreshing entertainment in this wave of pyrolytic heat and drought at the box office, but it's far from being a memorable A-list festival title. However, it ultimately manages to answer the question: man or shark, which is more dangerous? And the answer... you already know.