Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a solitary surfer with a troubled past, is searching for peace on the Gold Coast when she’s abducted by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a shark-obsessed serial killer. Trapped on his boat, she must find a way to survive — battling both her captor and the dangers lurking in the water below.
Shot on the Gold Coast and set against the wild beauty of the Australian coastline, Dangerous Animals is a gripping survival thriller from director Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones), with stunning visuals, a sharp script, and relentless tension, it’s perfect for fans of Wolf Creek and The Shallows.
As Dangerous Animals swims in to Australian cinemas this week, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s director, Sean Byrne, about crafting the unhinged characters, and finding the things that really get under audience’s skin.
Nick: Sean, it’s such a pleasure to meet you, man. I’m genuinely a huge fan of your work!
Sean Byrne: Thank you so much!
Nick: I’d love to start by asking about your directing process. This film is the first feature film you’ve directed that’s not based on a script you wrote. We’ve got Nick Lepard penning this one. So, I’m curious to know if your approach to directing changes at all when you’re bringing someone else’s idea to life, as opposed to something you’ve concocted in your mind?
Sean Bynre: Yeah, I mean I went to school at AFTRS, which is kind of like a microcosm of the film industry. I’m working with writers and different departments there, so I was kind of used to it. Then I spent the next 10 years in advertising, where admittedly it is like a 30-second script, but you’re still inheriting a script that you have to make your own.
So, Nick and I had worked on this one quite intimately together, to the point where it was with one brain, in a way. So by the time we got to shooting, I felt like I knew it as well as one of my own script. And that’s the only way I think you can ever direct, because every decision comes from subtext. And it’s character based. You can’t know how to prepare unless you know what’s happening between the lines, and I think what the characters are thinking. I always do character breakdowns, and head of department breakdowns, and then when you cast it, and bring on an incredible team that becomes the foundation of it all, they all elevate it. They always think of things that I hadn’t thought of to being with.
I think about it like studying for an exam. If you’ve studied properly, and things go wrong in the exam, you can still kind of cope with it still hopefully you come out of if with a decent result. If you cram a pre-production, and use that to be like, “Well, what film are we making here?”, then you’re lucky if you pass. I think it’s also my fear of failure. I try to do as much prep as possible, and surround myself with the best people.
Nick: You mentioned that you do character breakdowns, and I’m curious to know how much those characters evolve from what you’ve written on the page to when someone like Jai Courtney comes on board and brings this gravitas to it?
Sean Bynre: Well, the character actually evolved a lot on the age because originally this film was written for California, and then we sort of changed it to Australia, which was Brian Kavanuagh-Jones’, our American producer, idea because of the Australian dollar and it being a co-production. But, also it felt like it really justified the idea of this surfer who is running away from her kind of broken childhood, and she would just surf the globe. Plus, it’s also tied to this great lineage of Oz-ploitation films like Road Games with Jamie-Lee Curtis as this American lead.
I guess Tucker became more “Chopper”-esque, and it was finding that Australian larrikin that Nick wasn’t familiar with, but the structure of the character was always very similar, you know? It was always this spider catches a fly on the wall with this Ted Bundy charisma, getting the victims to let their guard down. Zephyr didn’t change as much, because as much as Tucker is a mansplainer, she’s more inward and always had this intestinal fortitude, and surfer’s kind of fitness. She’s someone who’s gone through the system, and similar to something like The Loved Ones, her pain ultimately becomes her saviour.
Jai’s character was reworked more than most, but not so it became more funny. But once he read the script, he would say he believed this, or not believe that. We just had a pact early on– like, I’m not one of those directors who puff their chest out – as long as we land on the same page, and the right answer. And if something felt false in the moment, then we talk through. So, things definitely evolved on set, and he improvised quite a lot as well. He’s so incredibly to watch because he wants to know the character, but not just learn the text, so when he says something, it feels fresh. He was always finding the character. Where as Hassie [Harrison] is more text driven, she likes to talk through it all. And that’s one of the great things about picking the right team. They all kind of make it evolve.
Nick: That unsettling charisma Jai Courtney plays really gets under your skin! When it comes to creating something that feels uncomfortable like that, do you draw from the things that gets under your skin, or do you gauge the reactions of things from your previous work to guide that feeling?
Sean Bynre: A lot of it is kind of thematic. Like in The Loved Ones, it was about finding what are the instruments of torture in somebody’s kitchen that you’re going to be using. Forks and salt! In Dangerous Animals, the torture devices are nautical – the multi-tool, the boat hook, the spear gun. So I start there and find what’s original about these kinds of instruments.
Horror budgets aren’t always huge, but I think the great opportunity within horror is that it exists in the moment between life and death. That’s when you get the audience eating out of the palm of your hand. That when the drilling sequence in The Loved Ones keeps the pushing the audience, or the thumb scene in Dangerous Animals. Audiences are so smart, they’ll second guess you. So, you’ve got to try and third and fourth guess them, and not be repetitive.It’s a really playful genre. It’s about messed up stuff. But, audiences are used to this roller coaster, so I’ve gotta put the loops in different places.
Nick: I’ll close out on this – Tucker, in his own demented way, is a collector of physical media. And as you can tell behind me, I love physical media too! I’m curious to know what role physical media has played in your life.
Sean Byrne: [laughs] Yeah, for Tucker it’s like his souvenirs. And it doesn’t leave a digital footprint. There’s this nice meta quality to it.
I mean, I love physical media. I used to love, after school, just scouring the shelves of record stores. I love that. I love that there’s a relationship with the artwork, and it pays respect to every aspect of a release. I worked in a video store for many, many years, and I miss how tactile being a fan is. There’s something very impersonal about digital and streaming, so hopefully Tucker’s keeping physical media alive!
Thank you so much to Sean for his time, and to Kismet Movies and Think Tank Communications for organising the interview. Dangerous Animals is in cinemas June 12.
