Dangerous Animals, a new horror film starring Jai Courtney, Hassie Harrison, and Josh Heuston, sets out to prove that sharks aren’t the most dangerous creature in the ocean. Written by Nick Lepard, the movie follows Zephyr (Harrison), an American surfer, who finds herself trapped on a boat with Courtney’s Bruce Tucker, who turns out to be much deadlier than he appears. Out on the open water, Zephyr must escape the grasp of Tucker, with one major complication–the seas surrounding the ship are teeming with sharks.

The tense seabound thriller was brought to life by director Sean Byrne, who is known for his work on other horror and thriller projects such as The Devil’s Candy and The Loved Ones. ScreenRant’s Dangerous Animals review hyped up Jai Courtney as the film’s villain, and Byrne’s direction certainly highlighted the menace in Courtney’s character. Byrne also aimed to make Dangerous Animals as real as possible, leaning into utilizing real sharks to evoke primal feelings of terror.

ScreenRant’s Liam Crowley interviewed Sean Byrne about his work on Dangerous Animals, which is in theaters now. Byrne discussed the joys of making a shark film, working with Jai Courtney, and more. Plus, the director shared the reasoning behind avoiding the use of CGI in creating underwater shark scenes.

How Sharks Helped Sean Byrne Get A Movie Made

“I Needed To Make A Shark Film Earlier”

Dangerous Animals represents Sean Byrne’s return to directing after a nearly ten-year break. The director had “written a lot of scripts and optioned all of them,” but “if you see my other films, they’re about humans hunting humans, and Hollywood is very risk-averse.” In Byrne’s words, that means that “even though you can sell an option, it doesn’t mean you necessarily get the financing.”

“As soon as this crossed my desk and I read it–this fusion of shark film and serial killer film felt like, conceptually, it could just be written on a napkin and sell.”

So, Byrne was excited to direct the film from a market perspective, but that wasn’t everything: “The thing that got me the most was the shark conservation angle, and the fact that this is the first shark film ever where the shark is not the monster–the man is the monster.”

“In this film, you’re safer in the water than you are on the boat. We are really the bad guy.”

Ultimately, the moral of the story, in Byrne’s words, was simple: “I needed to make a shark film earlier.”

How Jai Courtney Got Cast In Dangerous Animals

“He Was Our First Choice”

Tucker is a truly terrifying adversary in Dangerous Animals. The character kills for the fun of it, and seems to revel in the way that sharks attack their prey–the point of finding new opportunities for them to do so. And Jai Courtney, in Byrne’s mind, was always perfect for the role. “He was our first choice,” the director said, “and I feel so lucky that we’ve got him.”

“In our initial conversation,” Byrne shared, “we talked about the building blocks of the character, and where his damage comes from–parental neglect, a warped socialization, and the shark attack as a child–and how that’s influenced him. And, like many serial killers, I think he’s not really killing his victim; he’s killing the source of his pain over and over again.”

Even with all of that, Byrne wanted Tucker to be both charismatic and also “really nuanced and dangerous.” Influences for the role included Kathy Bates in Misery and Jack Nicholson in The Shining; “Where its horror as a genre where the antagonist can really own the stage, in a way. You can have fun and you can be genuinely dangerous, but you can also be really quite nuanced.”

Byrne also praised Courtney’s ability to provide genuine terror as well as crowd-pleasing moments: “He’s been in enough of these big franchises where he knows the difference between a movie line [and not]. So, ‘Welcome aboard’--he’s like, ‘Yeah, this is for the audience, isn’t it?’ And he knows the other moments to kind of look inward. Also, he’s physically so intimidating, so there’s a natural danger to him because he’s got that kind of grizzly bear power where he could just kill you with a punch.”

Byrne Shares His Commitment To Filming The Real Thing

From Working With Live Sharks To Shooting In The Ocean

One might think that a movie like Dangerous Animals would rely on CG sharks to add menace to its sequences for both safety and budgetary purposes. Not so: “Every shark that you see underwater is a real shark,” said Byrne. That said, the animals weren’t necessarily acting alongside the cast, with Byrne revealing that the filmmakers “plowed through hundreds of hours of shark footage to find sharks that would actually work with the point of view. A lot of it was done in the grade, blending water, or rotoscoping out sharks and then putting them in with the actors.”

“Everything you see underwater is real. Fins above water are CGI, just because it’s impossible for the blocking.”

Importantly, Byrne chose sharks whose appearances had a story to tell. “They’ve got scars the same way humans have scars. That was so important to me–our scars are a big part of our personality, and you never see that in shark films.”

Even if actors weren’t directly faced with sharks, they were often filmed on the open ocean. “We were in the middle of the ocean with pontoons for two weeks of night shoots,” Byrne shared, “which was just incredibly punishing. A lot of the crew was seasick and had balance issues.” Revealing more movie magic, the director added, “All the stuff on the crane–the boat is actually connected to a jetty just off a marina, but that is still actually on the water.”

“All those screams that are bleeding out in the night, they’re actually all over the water, and it was bone-chilling just being there.”

Dangerous Animals is in theaters now.