Bloody Horror October

Dangerous Animals

Shark movie with original ideas, and sharks aren't the antagonists; excellent suspense and acting; well-produced effects; 4.0 stars. 1HR 38 MIN LD Entertainment, 2025

According to a ScreenRant Plus YouTube interview, writer/director Sean Byrne “had written a lot of scripts and optioned [the rights for a set time] all of them.” But he knew that Hollywood producers are averse to risk, so he didn’t wait for financing to make movies based on those scripts. Instead, when Nick Lepard’s script for Dangerous Animals crossed his desk, a dark serial-killer-meets-sharks thriller, he felt it could sell. Byrne stated that he worked with screenwriter Lepard on the initial draft and refined the dialogue for Australia’s Gold Coast setting. Greatly enhanced by Jai Courtney’s lead performance, Byrne’s resulting film, Dangerous Animals, is an extremely good horror thriller that genre fans will be hard-pressed to find fault with. I’ll describe the setup and note some of its qualities.

Before the credits, the film opens with a young couple, Greg and Heather, seeking to book onto “Tucker’s Experience,” which involves a passage on Tucker’s boat followed by snorkeling in a cage while sharks swim around it. Jarring orchestral chimes signal peril as friendly-looking Tucker (Courtney) takes them out and tells them about his childhood encounter with a great white, “It’s not the shark’s fault.”

Tucker and Greg encourage Heather. With breathing tubes and goggles in hand, they approach the ship’s edge, ready to be caged and lowered into the shark-infested water. A swimming mako’s fin is spotted. Byrne said the film incorporated footage of real sharks into its underwater shark depictions. Coupled with clashing piano and percussion, these shark effects scenes are quite startling.

Once lowered, Byrne calms viewers with majestic orchestration as sharks swim in formation, all real, in what looks like brilliant shark choreography. Greg and Heather watch in wonder. The cage is lifted; Heather says, “Oh my god, that was amazing!” But it’s the calm before the storm of brutality. As Greg climbs back onto the ship, Tucker repeatedly stabs him in the neck, then effortlessly pushes his profusely bleeding body over to the sharks. Tucker’s leering face then turns to Heather. “Welcome aboard.” Over her screaming, DANGEROUS ANIMALS streams in bold, bloody letters on a black background, and cast and production credits roll over a pop song.

The scene shifts to surfers on the Gold Coast. Byrne’s cinematography is glorious, capturing stunning close-up surfing and a refreshing coastal reverie. We meet Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). Having just come out of the surf and dressed, she’s now shoplifting a container of ice cream from a convenience store. She meets Moses, who, needing help with his stalled car, threatens to expose her theft. As they work to jump-start his car, the two warm to each other, and by evening … go all the way.

But in the wee morning hours, she is moving on, driving away to surf. She parks her camper van by the sea, spreads out her necessities, and notices she needs a surfboard fin key. Calling out around the parking area for help finding one, she sees a pickup truck that just happens to belong to … Tucker. I’ll stop there at the 21-minute mark of a 98-minute movie. As you might expect, there are kidnappings, bloody murders, and intense dread to come.

When it comes to inhabiting a role, Jai Courtney makes a good film excellent. From the outset, his portrayal is terrifying, a peerless performance. Harrison is believable and good in her role as well. This movie is recommended. We gave it 4 out of 5 stars at our biweekly Bloody Horror Friday screenings.

The Raid 2

Grand-scale Indonesian martial arts; fantastic action and stunts; grimy cinematography; good perfs; 4.0 stars. 2HR 30MIN PT Marantau Films. 2014

Welsh-born writer/director Gareth Evans was fascinated by Indonesian martial arts. While filming in India, he cast Iko Uwais (in his screen debut) in the action film Merantau, followed by The Raid (2011), a box-office hit. With a larger budget, he began work on a sequel, The Raid 2 (2014), again starring Uwais. Inspired by Japanese Yakuza films and Martin Scorsese’s narrative style. He crafted a survival story featuring undercover cops, mob wars, assassins, and betrayal. I know, I know … an Asian martial arts film? And it’s a sequel to boot? I’ll describe both the setup and some of the qualities of what, in my opinion, is one of the top examples of choreographed violence in movies.

The film opens in thick, lush green fields. Two cars approach along farm roads and slowly stop. Henchmen get out and force a bare-chested man, a burlap sack over his head, onto the roadway. A grave is already dug. The man quivers as the sack is pulled off, and he endures the chief henchman's explanation of mob loyalty, the reason for his predicament. A gun is pointed at his head. He begs, but to no avail. To the sound of a gunshot, THE RAID 2 appears on screen in bold black letters on a blood-red background.

Next, we have a prison scene. Conditions are dingy and stifling. As the camera slowly zooms in, Rama (Iko Uwais) raises his head. He’s in a tiny, dirty cell. The music is hollow and droning as he’s brought, along with other prisoners, to another room for questioning by Bunawar and his men. Bunawar appears to be some kind of loosely organized authority. Is he a honcho in a criminal organization, or is he the law? One of Bunawar’s men repeatedly shoots an old prisoner seated next to Rama. Bunawar explains that the small division of cops he runs is “trying to weed out crooked cops.” The prisoner who was just shot was crooked. Bunawar needs Rama to help him “dig out some more.” Bunawar adds that they have to act fast, or “You’ll be gone in a week, your family too,” presumably at the hands of crooked cops.

Things get more complicated when what is logically a flashback begins. Bunawar, who is legitimately a cop (good or bad, we don’t know), presents his report on a truckload of murdered cops to police personnel. Watching through a window in another room, the commissioner turns to Reza, another high-ranking officer, and says, “What do you think?” Reza, smoking a cigarette (a symbol of nefariousness?), says, “I’ll take care of it personally.” The sides appear to be drawn, Bunawar versus Reza, but which group is corrupt, maybe both, and how is Rama to navigate?

We return to the present. Objecting to the killing of the crooked cop, Rama tells Bunawar, “We may be after the same thing, but I’m not going to follow the same path as you to get there.” So it’s back to the prison cell for Rama. He’s undercover, and he has to maintain his cover.

In another flashback scene, we get Rama’s backstory. It was his brother who was murdered in the pre-title sequence. On the rainy day of his brother’s funeral, Rama, sitting in a BMW, listens to Bunawar tell him the name of his brother’s killer. That's when Rama is recruited to work undercover to help bring down a local mobster kingpin and a yakuza family from Japan. “The city is carved up,” Bunawar says. “I need evidence that Reza has his hands in Bangun’s [the local kingpin] pockets.”

So, have we homed in on the antagonists? Bunawar believes Reza is corrupt and that the commissioner is unaware. Perhaps an obvious flaw in the film is that there are too many groups of bad guys. Bunawar identifies two types of mob groups menacing the city, but he says he’s most interested in rooting out the crooked cops aiding the mobs. Bunawar’s extreme methods also don’t seem particularly righteous. Back in the story, Rama goes undercover in prison to get close to Uco, the local kingpin’s son, who is serving time.

In the next flashback scene, Rama tells his wife he has to leave for a few months. She can’t know where he is. Subsequent scenes depict Rama’s treatment as a prisoner. At the film’s 15-minute mark, we have the first fight scene. It’s brief but a stunner. His cell is infiltrated, and Rama has to take on what appears to be dozens of other prisoners. I have to note that the narrative is disjointed. We don’t know what caused the fight, and the scenes that immediately follow don’t help. Still, we kind of get it. The fight was a display meant to impress fellow prisoner Uco.

This setup covers the first 20 minutes of a 2.5-hour movie. There are surprises, drama, and action-fights galore to come. For me, this is Uwais’ best work, but look for his great contributions to Headshot (2017) and The Night Comes For Us (2018). Fans of this action genre have seen Gareth Evans’ work. He went on to the well-regarded horror film Apostle (2018) (although I haven’t screened it yet), the fiery crime series Gangs of London (2020 -), and the pulse-pounding crime film Havoc (2025). But take notice of this movie, The Raid 2. The choreographed action and stunts are best seen to be believed. We haven’t screened it yet at our biweekly Bloody Horror Friday Club. I rate it a strong 4 out of 5 stars for eye-popping value.

Val

Satisfying horror-comedy; super perfs; good directing; okay effects; 3.5 stars. 1HR 21MIN Social House Films, 2021

We’ve written about independent writer/director Aaron Fradkin before, including his most recent horror film, the terrific episodic witch tale Beezel (2024). But well before that movie, Fradkin was “very much interested in getting into the horror space.” Per a DreadCentral.com interview, he said he’d been inspired by the works of Tim Burton and Sam Raimi. During the pandemic year of 2020, he pitched his idea of “a criminal breaking into” a “woman’s house,” central to a story around a “grand” demon “of Hell.” While searching for filming locations in Ojai, CA, he found a house that contained a secret sex dungeon, and he rewrote his script, adding this element. The resulting film, Val (2021), is a wildly entertaining horror-comedy romp. I’ll describe the set-up, plot points, and some of its defining qualities.

The film opens with police intercom chatter. A pair of officers, guns raised, tracks an on-the-run suspect. Fradkin’s camera follows the cops around corners and through a maze of parked cars, giving the scene a very procedural feel. The female officer, Daughtry (Sufe Bradshaw), corners suspect Fin (Zachary Mooren). “Get down on your knees, hands behind your head.” She approaches Fin, but he turns on her and struggles for the gun. We hear a shot, and as the image goes black, we hear “Morte” music. Has one of them been killed? The music is jarring, as if this isn’t a situation to be taken seriously. Cut to a female TV newscaster describing a reported assault and a suspect behaving erratically. She narrates right down to officer Daughtry’s confrontation; the TV caption indicates that Daughtry was injured … so not killed.

TV newscasts featuring this reporter appear at key moments in the movie, and there’s a bit of an Easter egg (see the film). The camera pulls back from a vintage television set and slowly rolls down ornate corridors, ending in an atrium with a vaulted ceiling and arched columns. Baroque music plays over pink-lettered cast credits, and Val (Misha Reeves), practicing a speech fragment, speaks into a mirror. She hears pounding on the front door, lifts the needle from the record playing the baroque music, and, dressed in black silk, she descends—I should say, floats down the winding staircase to her perfectly kept, elaborate wooden door.

On the run, Fin has entered the house. Val screams, bites, runs, and smacks him with a classic-looking landline telephone, but he overpowers her. Fin assumes control and forces Val to let him hide out in the house. She must accommodate, but she’s very deliberate in her actions, questioning Fin’s every command as if he should re-evaluate it. The emotions are exaggerated: the crying, the yelling. There’s not much calm, serious reflection, and so we come to realize we’re watching a black comedy.

Val says she’s a whore; she has a client coming; the client is dangerous, and there’s no stopping his arrival. Fin, possibly concussed, fades in and out, hallucinating. He recovers and remembers what led to his current plight. While he noshes on fruit from the kitchen, Val leads him downstairs to a safe room in the dungeon. This room is draped in textured red velvet and loaded with undressed mannequins—sex dolls? Val’s client/guest is, shall we say, “disposed of,” and she’s growing increasingly compliant. She now encourages Fin to stay in the house … with her.

The trailers and blurbs make it clear that Val is more than a natural being. Fin’s reality gets bent in increasingly paranoid, demonic, but all in all amusing ways. Flashbacks to his recent past explain his predicament, and in the end, Fradkin’s script might leave things ambiguous. I hope I haven’t conveyed too much.

The grue effects aren’t overwhelming, but they’re adequate for the story idea. I can see the Sam Raimi influence in the reanimated dead late in the film. The acting is excellent for largely 2D characters. That Reeves and Moore wonderfully embody their roles is understandable, since the script was written specifically for these actors, Fradkin’s real-life best friends. Comedian Erik Griffin delivers a true belly laugh in a small supporting role. This is a delightful, rewatchable movie, and I think it suits any audience. The audience will have to accept the aggressive and dark themes, but they’re meant to be situational.

As yet, we haven’t screened it at our biweekly Bloody Horror Friday Club. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

garysvehla509@gmail.com

DO YOU LIKE DARK CINEMA LIKE WE DO?

Submit an article or a critique of an article; Tell us how to improve the website!