Australian director Sean Byrne is one among horror’s premiere mixologists. His debut, 2009’s The Liked Ones, meshed teen romance with ugly Hostel-style extremism. 2015’s The Satan’s Sweet put a heavy metallic spin on the haunted-house romp. His new movie, Harmful Animals, in theaters now, raises a query nobody was asking a few traditional B-movie subgenre: When is a killer shark film not a killer shark film?

Reply: When the killer shark is only a weapon in a human killer’s fingers.

Regardless of arriving simply in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws, Harmful Animals has much less in widespread with it (or with The Shallows or 47 Meters Down) and is extra in keeping with Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath or Noticed (or one among Australia’s fashionable horror successes, Wolf Creek). Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) stars as Zephyr, an American surfer floating across the Australian coast in search of the proper waves — and perhaps the fitting romance. She doesn’t discover it in Tucker (Jai Courtney of Terminator Genisys), who abducts her off the seashore earlier than daybreak and locks her up with one other vacationer, Heather (Ella Newton), on his shark expedition boat. Tucker is a mega-creep who will get off on shark assaults. Zephyr and Heather are his newest chum.

At 90 minutes, Harmful Animals is lean and imply enjoyable. Zephyr isn’t any damsel in misery, and rapidly plots an escape from what appears like an not possible scenario. Tucker has pushed them out to the center of the ocean the place he can will get wasted on low cost liquor, dance to disco tunes, and put together to ritualistically dunk his prey into shark-infested waters. He’s an absolute psychopath, and Byrne lets Courtney fully off the possible-Hollywood-leading-man leash. The actor is frothing on the mouth and twitching in his eyes all through the deranged image, with a degree of egolessness that manifested barely when he performed [checks notes] Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad. That is higher.

Harrison summons her personal energy within the face of Courtney’s towering physique in Zephyr’s a number of escape makes an attempt. Byrne takes full benefit of the claustrophobic setting of the boat — and the huge vacancy of the ocean surrounding it. It’s a geographically coherent however unsettling maze for a cat shark-and-mouse sport that hardly ever succumbs to contrivances to ratchet up the stress. Getting off a ship surrounded by sharks simply appears actually powerful! And for as blockheaded as Tucker appears, he’s devoted a lot of his life to constructing the final word floating jail.

Whereas Harmful Animals by no means goes full Deep Blue Sea with far-fetched shark kills, Byrne, by the use of Tucker’s fetish, nonetheless units up some nightmarish assaults. Tucker doesn’t identical to to observe sharks tear his victims to shreds, he additionally videotapes them on a Nineties-era digicam for future VHS viewing. So the deaths are gradual and savage, with Courtney’s wide-eyed gaze committing as a lot violence because the razor-sharp shark enamel. There’s blood within the water, and throughout this killer’s fingers.

Within the days of so-called “elevated horror,” Harmful Animals delivers earnest thrills with a simple-yet-innovative slasher premise. In my thoughts, the freshest horror films discover a kernel of specificity in a timeless premise. Byrne’s film isn’t far off from the Halloween formulation — large man hunts down indomitable girl with scary weapon of selection — however whisking us to Australia, sending us to sea, and the what-if of a sightseeing tour information with a hard-on for shark assaults is the targeted lens a filmmaker must ship one thing new. Sick, however new.