Bite Club

It's a game of cat, mouse and shark in Sean Byrne's horror thriller Dangerous Animals

- WORDS: ROBBIE DUNLOP

AFTER MAKING A name for himself with The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy, Sean Byrne all but vanished from horror. Now the Australian director returns though he's adamant he never truly left.

“I've been writing constantly and had a handful of scripts optioned,” he tells Red Alert. “But the unfortunate truth is, if you're drawn to R-rated material about humans hunting humans with rich, disturbing characterisation, it's not easy to get those films off the ground - Hollywood's so dominated by IP [intellectual property] now.”

Like his earlier films, Dangerous Animals taps into Byrne's ongoing fascination with the darker side of human nature. This time, the killer is Tucker (Jai Courtney), a shark-dive operator who abducts victims, holds them captive aboard his boat and feeds them to the sharks he's baited below. “The sharks are basically his weapon,” Byrne explains. “If Michael has his knife and Freddy has his fingers, Tucker has his sharks. He's the puppeteer.”

He laughs as he recalls one of the taglines floating around during production: It's actually safer in the water. “I think that's the real point of difference,” he says. “It's a shark film fused with a serial killer film - and it's the first shark film I've seen where the sharks aren't indiscriminate killers. In a way, it's Wolf Creek on water, but it absolutely takes its lead from Jaws in terms of suspense. For me, shark fins are the definition of tension - you see them slicing the surface, never knowing when or where the attack will come.”