We live in full decay: our entertainment is the spectacle of decomposition.
— Emil Cioran
In the maelstrom of contemporary cinema, where the abyss stares at the audience and the audience responds with popcorn, comes Dangerous Animals — a film that takes the myth of the killer shark, takes it on a school trip to Australia, and gifts it a VHS-obsessed nostalgic killer.
The film, presented with a certain seriousness at Cannes 2025 (Quinzaine section, just to set the tone), sinks its teeth into the raw flesh of the survival horror genre, only to resurface like a blown-up balloon, ready to burst under the sun of obviousness.
The shark, once the embodiment of the marine unconscious and primal instinct, here merely serves as biological wallpaper: nature as pure chaos, a Darwinian reminder that no character is safe, but above all, that the screenplay is adrift.
And amid this drift emerges Zephyr, survivor by vocation, final girl out of disdain for defeat, a true tragic heroine in a reality-show world. Her fight is not for life, but against stupidity. And she wins precisely because — miraculously — she never stoops to the logic of the film that hosts her.
Zephyr is a fighter. Not for ideology, not for trauma, not for revenge. She fights because — and here lies the true existential twist — she has decided that she’s too annoyed to die badly. It’s an ontological gesture, almost Cartesian: I think, therefore I exist, therefore I’ll smash your face, dear serial killer.
Around her unfolds a series of macabre scenes, not so much for narrative necessity as for self-indulgent sadism: limbs severed with surgical precision, sea dives with snuff film intent, sharks acting as metaphor and collective dentures. All seasoned with black humor that aims to be provocative but ends up unintentionally dadaist.
Tucker, the antagonist, is a psychopath with cinephile tendencies and a fetish for analog format. Were he not a killer, he’d simply be an idiot. Instead, he is a simple idiotic tour guide with the mission of turning young women into post-human installations to be consumed in low definition.
The film occasionally tries to raise issues: predatory tourism, sharks used as attractions, socioeconomic imbalances between predators and prey — but all evaporates in favor of predictable jokes. A kind of beach activism, as if Greenpeace had written the script during a blackout.
There are hints — fleeting as lucid thoughts in a drunken haze — of social inequality, predatory tourism, the ethics of documenting death. But fear not: all of that is promptly abandoned in favor of night chases, well-calibrated screams, and the occasional dark quip.
Byrne’s direction plays with visual citation from ’70s B-movies and emotional recycling from Netflix series. Budget limits are noticeable but cleverly disguised: low lighting, generous blood, some nods to Jaws, and plenty of self-ironic camp. The result is a well-tempered death spectacle for stomachs that laugh while turning away.
After all, Nietzsche would have said that human beings are the only animals who enjoy watching their peers suffer, as long as it’s called fiction.
Yet Zephyr keeps everything afloat. Despite the script, despite the jokes, despite the water. She is the one saving what can still be saved. Not because she represents an idea or a symbol, but because a true heroine exists, and she makes us forget — at least for a while — how much everything else is an aquatic circus looking for an author.
Despite everything, it’s fun. Not in the noble sense, but in the somewhat guilty one: like watching cat videos with dubbed voices. Dangerous Animals says nothing that hasn’t been said better, but it shouts it loud and colors it, for better or worse.
Dangerous Animals doesn’t dig deep, doesn’t question, doesn’t explore. But it entertains. With the elegance of a rusty knife and the coherence of a nightmare edited by an intern. Yet it’s hard to look away. Because, as Cioran would say:
Boredom is the root of all evil. And watching films like this is our postmodern way of pretending to fight it.
— Emil Cioran
