Jai Courtney in Psycho-Meets-Shark Horror

Whereas Ozploitation dates again to 1970, the predecessor Harmful Animals calls to thoughts greater than something is 2005’s Wolf Creek. Solely this time, the mayhem occurs in open water. Each these sadistic Australian B-movies revolve round a psychotic serial killer preying on vacationers and each serve up blood, guts and torture porn, which ought to present gnarly amusement for style followers. Director Sean Byrne doesn’t lean exhausting sufficient into the trashy pleasures for optimum enjoyable, in contrast to among the extra preposterous latest shark motion pictures. (Give me The Shallows, Underneath Paris, The Meg.) However he dishes up loads of lurid chum and places a kickass heroine in peril.

Contemplating the fascination with sharks in Australian seashore tradition and the sturdy numbers of Nice Whites slicing by means of the oceans off the Western and Southern coasts, particularly, the nation’s output of shark thrillers has largely lacked chunk. Maybe the chief exception is 2010’s lean and imply The Reef, whereas 2012’s Bait 3D earned factors for its bonkers premise — sharks in a flooded grocery store! That movie’s long-stalled sequel, Deep Water, is due later this yr, courtesy of director Renny Harlin, who is aware of his method round a shark tank from Deep Blue Sea.

Within the meantime, right here comes Harmful Animals, a curious option to premiere in Cannes’ Administrators’ Fortnight, forward of its June 6 launch by means of IFC and Shudder. Neither the perfect nor the worst of the inexhaustible sub-genre birthed by Steven Spielberg’s unsurpassed traditional, Jaws, Byrne’s handsome movie at the least has the excellence of being one of many nastiest entries shortly.

That’s as a result of the carnage across the boat is matched up on deck, the place human prey are hoisted on a winch, then lowered bleeding into the shark-infested waters whereas Tucker (Jai Courtney) movies the ugly feeding frenzy for his secret library of snuff motion pictures. In case that’s not creepy sufficient, he tucks a lock of the sufferer’s hair into the packaging of every tape.

Over the course of simply 20 years, Courtney has gone from strapping younger hunk to brawny musclehead to Oliver Reed. He leans in with relish to the beefy character actor mildew, injecting the massive bear of a person with brash charisma, wily menace and ferocious brutality that trace on the roots of his unhinged mania. Not that Nick Lepard’s script affords a lot in the way in which of psychological perception.

Working out of the vacationer mecca of Surfers Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast, Tucker captains a weathered outdated fishing boat, on which he runs “Swimming with Sharks” excursions, providing cage-dive thrills, often to younger vacationers. Why these people don’t change their minds when he asks questions like, “So, I assume nobody is aware of you’re right here?” is anyone’s guess.

He welcomes aboard Canadian Greg (Liam Greinke) and his Brit fellow hostel visitor Heather (Ella Newton) and chugs far out from shore whereas making uncomfortable jokes about “human chum.” Tucker lightens — or heightens? — their nervous rigidity by singing a macabre shark ditty, earlier than giving them the marketed expertise of being lowered in a cage right into a cluster of circling sharks. They emerge exhilarated, however that doesn’t final lengthy when Tucker unceremoniously dispatches Greg, whereas Heather screams in terror.

In the meantime, again on the town, Moses (Josh Heuston), a younger actual property dealer with the physique of an underwear mannequin, is having automotive hassle. Having noticed American free-spirit surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) shoplifting from a comfort retailer, he teasingly blackmails her into serving to jump-start his automotive. Fairly quickly, jumper cables aren’t all they’re connecting, and steamy intercourse segues into candy afterglow discuss (she quotes Level Break at him) that means a possible romance. However when the dialog will get too intimate, Zephyr takes off within the beat-up van that serves as her residing quarters.

Reluctant to let her slip away, Marco guesses the place she’s headed to log on earlier than dawn. However he will get there too late, after Tucker has hauled her off unconscious in a surfboard bag. (Wonderful use of a multipurpose utility, BTW.) She wakes up on the boat handcuffed to a mattress throughout from Heather, in a naked cell whose solely amenity is a bucket. Names scratched into the rusty partitions are a nasty signal. When Moses sees Zephyr’s van being towed, he is aware of one thing’s mistaken, and for the reason that police are dragging their heels about investigating, he begins doing his personal digging.

The lyrics of Crowded Home’s “Imply to Me” — certainly one of a handful of selection Oz-rock nuggets sprinkled in among the many groaning and juddering of Michael Yezerski’s big-ass rating — trace that Zephyr is just not programmed to be a helpless sufferer: “She got here all the way in which from America / She had a blind date with future.”

Harrison (Yellowstone) is an actual asset right here. It’s at first mildly distracting that she appears to be like and sounds so uncannily like Jennifer Lawrence that they need to be solid as sisters. However that takes nothing away from the sharp survival instincts, tenacity and resourcefulness baked into her character, which she performs with the bruised resilience of a girl who grew up in foster houses and couldn’t get away quick sufficient. Browsing for Zephyr represents the last word escape.

At her first signal of resistance, Tucker says he loves a fighter: “Makes for a greater present.” She’s not afraid to name bullshit on his windy posturing in regards to the hierarchy of animals, the significance of sustaining order within the ecosystem and his true non secular calling to serve the god down under. She is aware of his sort and her blunt studying of what made him such a monster seems to hit a few nerves.

For his perverse leisure, Tucker hauls Zephyr up on deck and straps her right into a chair to witness a horrific spectacle. “It’ll be your time to shine tomorrow night time,” he tells her. Courtney’s efficiency works finest in leering psycho mode, much less so when Tucker is bloviating philosophically — however that’s the fault of the script. He’s scariest in his feral moments, for example when he’s growling and snarling as he instruments round city and spots one other potential sufferer.

However his standout scene is likely to be an exultant post-kill dance within the boat’s most important cabin, swilling booze and hurtling himself across the room in underwear and a gown to Stevie Wright’s immortal 1974 Oz banger, “Evie.” It’s just like the butch model of Jame Gumb’s Silence of the Lambs dance, with Tucker’s bronzed furry intestine proudly declaring his untamed ’Strayan masculinity.

The film lags right here and there as Zephyr’s escape makes an attempt develop into repetitive. Each victory is adopted by a setback, together with the stealth arrival on board of Moses. However each Harrison and Heuston give audiences characters to root for, which sustains the suspense by means of to the bloody last act.

Byrne made a reputation for himself as a horror auteur along with his twisty, subversive debut The Cherished Ones and its American followup, The Satan’s Sweet. Right here, he’s over-reliant on soar scares, however he makes a smart move by easily mixing manipulated footage of actual sharks with stay motion, nixing the thought of mechanical creatures and minimizing the CG necessities.

Anybody with an aversion to bodily and psychological torture will seemingly discover Harmful Animals a repulsive turnoff, however others with a style for grisly violence ought to discover one thing juicy to chomp on.