The Best-Reviewed Shark Attack Movie Since ‘Jaws’ Was Just Released

I’ll be honest, I had never heard about Dangerous Animals until about an hour ago, but now that it’s on my radar, I must see it. It’s a shark attack film that happens to be the highest-scoring entry in the genre since the original Jaws, and that’s no exaggeration. Here’s the synopsis:

“When Zephyr, a rebellious surfer, is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer and held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below.”

Man-eating sharks? Serial killers? What more could you ask for? This may sound goofy, but critics and audiences agree that it’s actually awesome. It has an 83% critic score with well over 100 reviews in, plus a 74% audience score. Here’s how it stacks up against other shark movies:

• Jaws – 97%
• Dangerous Animals 83%
• Kon-Tiki – 83%
• The Shallows – 78%
• Sharknado – 77%
• The Reef – 76%
• Open Water – 71%
• The Reef: Stalked – 71%
• Under Paris – 66%
• Sharknado 2: The Second One – 61%
• Deep Blue Sea – 60%
• Jaws 2 – 58%
• 47 Meters Down – 53%
• The Meg – 47%

You get the idea. I’m giving Dangerous Animals a leg up over Kon-Tiki because it’s both more of a shark attack movie, and it has more reviews. There are other shark movies with higher scores, but they are all documentaries mainly about the plight of real-world sharks who do not eat people all the time or align themselves with serial killers.

There’s some bad news about Dangerous Animals, however. It’s not going to be available on any of your streaming services at the moment. It’s an actual theatrical release, so you’ll have to truck out to see it over the likes of Mission Impossible and Ballerina. I’m not sure I can bring myself to do that, and this does seem like the type of movie that will probably hit streaming rental in a month, so I’m probably just going to wait for that.

The only actor I recognize here is Jai Courtney of Spartacus, Suicide Squad and a bunch of other “that guy” roles (where he’s very good!). Hassie Harrison plays Zephyr, who you will probably recognize from a long arc in Yellowstone as Laramie. I don’t watch that, so I couldn’t place her. Before that, she was in the long-running TruTV series Tacoma FD.

This sounds awesome, and those are, in fact, impressive reviews for a shark movie. I’ll see it as soon as I can watch it on my couch.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.