Somehow the Australian director Sean Byrne only has three movies. There was THE LOVED ONES (2009) and THE DEVIL’S CANDY (2015) and now a whole ten years later he has DANGEROUS ANIMALS. I liked all three of these, but this is the first one I caught in a theater, which required some initiative because it only lasted here a week. If you missed it you can watch it on VOD and it will eventually be on Shudder and I assume on disc.
The title refers to 1) sharks, 2) a maniac who feeds people to sharks for kicks and 3) (arguably/poetically) the protagonist, who we hope has the killer instinct to survive numbers one and two.
This is not as mean or hopeless as WOLF CREEK, but it reminds me of that movie because it creates a very Australian slasher in a very Australian setting. Instead of the outback this is the Gold Coast, it’s all surfing and sharks, and like WOLF CREEK it has a really knock out, darkly funny performance by the actor playing the killer. Even better, that actor is the once-mocked and underappreciated Jai Courtney. Everything about this movie is good, but he’s the main reason to watch it. (read the rest of this shit…)
All I knew about THE DEVIL’S CANDY (2015) was
THE LOVED ONES is a 2009 Australian horror picture about five teenagers on the night of the End of School Dance. Brent (Xavier Samuel) is a broody long-haired dude haunted by a recent personal tragedy. He goes for a walk before the dance and disappears, his mom and girlfriend figure something bad happened to him and try to find him. Only we know that a local psycho (John Brumpton) hit him over the head and brought him home for his daughter Lola (Robin McLeavy), who had asked Brent to the dance and been turned down.
