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National Geographic
19 hours ago
- Health
- National Geographic
Statin drugs are an Internet villain. Do they deserve it?
Cholesterol-lowering medicines are some of the most commonly prescribed, effective drugs. Influencers on TikTok have other ideas. The cholesterol-lowering drug Simvastatin. Like other statins, this drug reduces the levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the body. Over 40 million Americans currently take statins. Photograph by James King-Holmes, Science Photo Library Inside the average doctor's office, statins aren't controversial; they're a crucial lifesaving tool used to lower dangerously high cholesterol levels, reducing risk of heart attack. But on social media, the drug is often villainized, painted as a poison pill, or a symptom of a diseased medical system. Recently, influencers have claimed that statins cause more harm than good and have endless side effects. Others take even bigger swings, claiming that the fundamental science behind cholesterol is a myth, one that's used simply to sell more statins . 'If you only went online,' Spencer Nadolsky says, 'you would never want to have a statin.' Nadolsky, a physician who specializes in obesity and lipids, is familiar with the social media critiques. 'It's one of the most fear-mongered yet amazing drugs of our time,' he says. How did boring generic pharmaceutical—a drug prescribed to 200 million people worldwide—become controversial? Part of the answer is influencers who proselytize ketogenic and carnivore diets, promising weight loss and other health benefits through the consumption of high fat consumption and limited carbohydrates. When adhering to one of these diets, the body uses fat as its main fuel source instead of carbohydrates, which can lead to loss of body fat while maintaining muscle mass. The success of these diets is often bolstered by fit social media influencers eating red meat off a cutting board, touting the benefits of their preferred version of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. One influencer even claimed that her transition from a vegan diet to a carnivore diet cured her of everything from brain fog to flatulence. But keto and carnivore have been associated with dramatic increases in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol—the cholesterol most strongly associated with heart disease, often called the 'bad' cholesterol. Rejecting the lipid hypothesis, many influencers cast doubt on the widely accepted concept that cholesterol contributes to atherosclerosis, which is the buildup of fats and cholesterol in and on the artery walls. The head of a 60 year old patient with high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. The blood vessels are the result of atherosclerosis which is the buildup of fats and cholesterol in and on the artery walls. Image by Zephyr/Science Photo Library Clinical lipidologist Tom Dayspring describes claims like these as 'ketogenic nonsense.' He says that patients might not experience any symptoms of atherosclerosis until it's too late. What some people don't understand, Dayspring explains, is that heart disease only presents symptoms like chest pain and arrhythmia in very late stages of progression. Symptoms, Dayspring notes, can't be used to diagnosis the disease. 'Most people are dropping dead before they get any symptoms of heart disease,' he says. A scent, a touch, or a sip can be just what you need to lock an important moment into your mind forever. Dayspring says that LDL levels in the United States follow a bell curve. In general, doctors want to get their patients to the 20th percentile or lower, or around 100 mg of LDL cholesterol per deciliter of blood. Once you go above the 20th percentile, the exponential risk becomes a 'straight line to heaven,' Dayspring says. The only way to reduce serious medical issues like heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes brought on by plaque accumulation in the arteries is to achieve very low levels of LDL cholesterol. Dayspring describes it as 'an illegal dump job of cholesterol in your artery wall.' A lipid can only travel through plasma when it's wrapped in a protein known as a lipoprotein. 'Some lipoproteins, for whatever reason, leave plasma, crash the artery wall, and dump their cholesterol.' That's where statins can help. Low-density lipoproteins, or LDLs, are molecules that are a combination of fat and protein and are the form in which lipids are transported in the blood. LDLs transport cholesterol from the liver to the tissues of the body, including the arteries, which has lead LDL being known as "bad" cholesterol. Micrograph by Science Photo Library A colored transmission electron micrograph of high density lipoprotein (HDL), or 'good' cholesterol. HDL cholesterol plays a role in fat metabolism and contributes to cardiovascular health Micrograph by Lennart Nilsson, TT/Science Photo Library Approved in the United States in 1987, statins work by blocking an enzyme in the liver—where most of the body's cholesterol is produced—which prevents LDL production. Statins reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart disease, which is still the leading cause of death in the United States. Over 40 million Americans currently take statins. Until the early 2000s, statins were the only game in town for managing cholesterol, Dayspring says. Now, there are newer drugs that can also help. One class of drugs, PCSK9 inhibitors, lowers LDL cholesterol by blocking the protein that binds to LDL receptors, keeping these receptors available to clear LDL cholesterol from the blood stream. Unlike statins, these drugs haven't been vilified by. While LDL is often referred to as the 'bad' cholesterol because it can contribute to plaques, and HDL is called the 'good' cholesterol for clearing excess cholesterol from the arteries, it's not black and white. The body requires LDL to function since it assists in cellular construction and repair and serves as a building block for many essential hormones. 'I tell patients up front, [LDL] is the delivery cholesterol, because every tissue in your body needs tens of thousands of doses of cholesterol every day,' says Stephen Kopecky, a preventative cardiologist and the director of the Mayo Clinic's Statin Intolerance Clinic in Minnesota. 'If you didn't have it, you'd be dead,' Kopecky explains. 'So it can't be that bad. There's a sweet spot.' But LDL is just one measure of cholesterol. Dayspring thinks the most measurement to pay attention to is apolipoprotein B, or ApoB, the protein component found in several lipids, including LDL, but not HDL. ApoB, involved in cholesterol transport, is considered superior to LDL cholesterol to assess the risk of heart disease. Unlike LDL cholesterol, ApoB captures a more complete picture of all potentially plaque-causing particles in the blood. For example, a person with normal LDL cholesterol but high ApoB would still be at risk for heart disease. Looking at ApoB is relatively new in the United States, which has historically used LDL. But the rest of the world uses this measurement, says Kopecky. Statin side effects and intolerance Like all medication, statins have side effects. On social media, these side effects are often front-and-center, used by influencers to show that the drug is inefficient or steer followers from considering the medication altogether. The most common are muscle aches, headaches, digestive issues. More seriously, for people with insulin resistance, there's an increased risk to develop Type 2 diabetes (though the American Diabetes Association advises that people with diabetes go on a statin if they're older than 40). To Nadolsky, the benefits outweigh the risks. He compares taking statin to taking daily multivitamin. In his practice, he's able to convince skeptical patients who've bought into the influencer-driven narrative around statins with some basic facts. If the patient claims that LDL cholesterol is not the cause of development of plaque in the arteries, he'll point out that the association is 'one of the most grounded scientific things we know.' Nadolsky's claims are backed up by a trove of evidence, including a 2017 a meta-analysis in the European Heart Journal. That paper found that the totality of evidence 'unequivocally establishes' that LDL causes atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ACSVD.) In 2020, the panel restated its conclusion, and also identified emerging evidence for ApoB's role in ASCVD. Some patients, however, are statin intolerant. A 2022 meta-analysis drawing on 4.1 million patients found statin intolerance within 9.1 percent of this population. By Kopecky's estimation, there are three types of statin intolerant patients: those who experience body aches on the medication, and who cycle their use on and off to manage their cholesterol. Kopecky is part of this group. He experiences muscle aches after several months on a statin. Doctors will sometimes temporarily discontinue a patient's statins and then add statins back to their regimen with either modified doses or a different statin to curb side effects. A second group experiences 'these weird symptoms that aren't really related to when they take the medicine.' Researchers have observed a nocebo effect, or negative placebo effect associated with statins, and one 2020 study found this effect might be increasing. The third group, which Kopecky finds most concerning, are those worried about potential statin intolerance, who won't ever visit Kopecky's office. Many patients, he says, will come in and say, 'I don't want to take this drug. I've been on the Internet. I know that's bad for me, doctor.' A statin's effects on the brain are another concern around the medication. Statins are the only drug that can cross the blood-brain barrier and inhibit cholesterol synthesis in the brain, which is the body's most cholesterol-rich organ, Dayspring explains. Cholesterol is required for the brain to operate, but excess cholesterol in the brain can cause neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's. Dayspring points to the evidence which, he says, shows that 'statins do not hurt the brain in any way, but they actually improve dementia a little bit.' For the exceedingly rare group of people who experience brain fog while on statins, he theorizes that they've over-suppressed the brain's synthesis of cholesterol. But since the brain makes its own cholesterol, drugs that lower cholesterol levels in the liver do not affect the brain's cholesterol levels. Self-guided research on cholesterol and statins can lead to conflicting advice. A quick scan of the best-selling heart health books on Amazon shows titles like The Great Cholesterol Myth and The Cholesterol Hoax, and other offerings that advise readers to load up on red meat, Kopecky says. These books capitalize on a well-established formula. Diet books, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the New Yorker more than two decades ago, are 'selling something that people want to buy: the idea that they can eat whatever they want.' Beyond misinformation, part of the mistrust around statins is that drug companies didn't initially provide all the information about the drug's side effects, leading doctors, including Kopecky, to pass on incomplete information to patients. It took 20 years before doctors realized that statins can cause a minor increase in blood glucose, which can lead to type 2 diabetes. The lagging response, Kopecky says, has led to some patients to distrust their doctors on this specific treatment. Cholesterol deposits causing the narrowing of a blood vessel which raises blood pressure and puts strain on the heart. Atherosclerosis is the main cause of heart attacks. Photograph by Lennart Nilsson, Boehringer Ingelheim/TT/Science Photo Library Colored coronary angiogram of a 53 year old patient with severe narrowing of the circumflex coronary artery. Photograph by Zephy/Science Photo Library Regardless of claims on the internet, the only lifestyle change that can help control LDL cholesterol is significantly reducing the consumption of saturated fats, Dayspring says. For people with cardiovascular risk that can't be controlled by lifestyle factors, pharmacological intervention is the only option. And the first drug doctors reach for is statins. Lifestyle, Kopecky says, is incredibly important. While a large portion a person's cholesterol is genetic, any positive change is welcome, according to the data. 'Nothing you do to improve your health is ever too little, and nothing you do to improve your health is ever too late in your life,' he says. But he's bearish on keto. 'You just can't eat a keto diet forever,' Kopecky says. There is a healthy version of the diet, he notes—one that relies on extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and avocado oils as the primary fat sources, with just one ounce of red meat per day—but that's a far cry from the steak-loaded cutting boards influencers tout on social media. The carnivore diet often conjures mental images of predators in the wild, consuming double-digit pounds of meat per day. There is even one strict regimen of red meat, salt, and water, is known as the 'Lion Diet.' But despite the image of a diet bridging the gap to our animalistic nature, only humans have high cholesterol, Dayspring notes. 'Things that eat meat all day long, have LDL cholesterols of 15 to 20.' One criticism of statins is that they're overprescribed. And a recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that's likely the case, but it didn't question the benefits of statins or their necessity. According to the study, '50 million US adults aged 40 years and older meet criteria for elevated ASCVD risk,' for a statin prescription, even by the study's revised numbers. To convince wary patients, Nadolsky shares a personal datapoint: he's on a statin. 'I practice what I preach,' he says. Statins are one of the best medicines in use, according to Nadolsky. 'It's just a shame that people aren't utilizing them, due to the fear mongering that is done online.' A 2019 study published in JAMA Cardiology showed less adherence to taking statin medication was associated with more incidences of death for patients with ASCVD. Kopecky, too, is concerned with patients who explicitly say they don't want to take statins after reading about them on the internet. In response, his clinic polled 1,200 of these patients to see what would tip the scales to change their minds about statins. The patients wanted to know three things: cholesterol is involved in heart disease, doctors have a way to lower risk of heart disease, and the treatment is safe. As a result, Kopecky and the Mayo Clinic released a series of videos to address each of these three points. Still, medical misinformation still runs rampant on social media and even crops up next to reputable professionals on social media. When viewing a YouTube video of Kopecky discussing statin misinformation on Mayo Clinic Radio, two of the recommended videos in the sidebar were a video purporting to reveal the 'big pharma' conspiracy behind statins and a second one claiming that LDL cholesterol is a myth. 'LDL is not a myth, and you have to look at the totality of evidence,' Kopecky says. He thinks anyone with high cholesterol should seek treatment for it but understands they might not want to: 'You can't make everybody drink the Kool-Aid.'
The Review Geek
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
Dangerous Animals (2025) Ending Explained – Does Zephyr manage to survive?
Dangerous Animals Plot Summary The opening of Dangerous Animals sets the scene for the film to follow. Mysterious, tense and just a tad surreally funny – Bruce Tucker runs a shark-diving expedition on his boat. Unfortunately, it all goes wrong for tourist Heather when her boyfriend is killed, fed to the sharks, while she's abducted by this maniacal serial killer. With Bruce on the hunt for new victims, he sets his sights on young survivalist Zephyr, a savvy and free-spirited surfer. When she crosses paths with Bruce, Zephyr must do everything she can to overcome this maniacal predator. Why is Bruce killing? Bruce Tucker is a disillusioned man, killing his victims by feeding them to sharks. He's a firm believer of the hierarchy within the animal world and knows that sharks associate his boat with food, hence why the sharks swim around. He targets impressionable young women – preferably tourists – and chalks their deaths up to 'accidents' at sea. Bruce films the encounters for his own amusement and gets his kicks from watching them back. He has a whole bunch of videotapes in his cupboard recording these deaths, complete with locks of hair for good measure. All of these are locked up (no pun intended) inside his cupboard where numerous other tapes are located. How long does Zephyr have to live? When Zephyr awakens after being kidnapped, she finds herself in the presence of Heather, who's still alive after the incident from the start of the movie. Zephyr shows her resourcefulness and attempts to pick her handcuff lock with the underwire from a bra but it doesn't work. Bruce drugs them both and makes a show of it, killing Heather right in front of Zephyr and filming the encounter. Bruce then decides that Zephyr has 24 hours to live before she goes swimming with the fishes. Zephyr buys herself some time by throwing Tucker's camcorder in the water. As our killer wants to film and savor the experience, he heads back to shore to get a replacement. How does Moses try to save Zephyr? Whilst docked, this gives Moses Markley time to mount a rescue mission. We met Moses earlier in the movie and Zephyr's casual hook-up turns to more when she realizes she genuinely has feelings for him. That feeling is mutual for Moses, who does his own investigation and tracks down the boat. All of this eventually converges with Moses and Zephyr captured and driven out on the boat to Hangman's Shoals, a secluded area in the nearby sea. Having understood now how sharks operate (partly thanks to Tucker's surprisingly informative monologues) Zephyr convinces Moses to stay as still as possible in the water. This works so the sharks don't attack, given they don't mistake him for a seal. Bruce takes things one step further and stabs the guy in the chest before dropping him back in the ocean again. The entire operation however is interrupted by a helicopter flying around outside, prompting Moses' torturous ordeal to be delayed. Does Zephyr manage to get away? Moses bleeds so much that he passes out, allowing Bruce some alone time with Zephyr. He likens himself to her, pointing out he can see the fight she has and likens both of them to sharks; solitary creatures that fend for themselves. Zephyr dislocates (and bites off) her thumb to break free of her handcuff when he leaves, but unfortunately Tucker tracks her down again when she tries to run away. As a result, he's ready for the final show. How does Zephyr manage to stop Bruce Tucker? In the water, Zephyr puts on one heck of a performance, managing to stave off a Great White as it circles her, preparing to strike. With Bruce hungrily filming, Zephyr manages to break free from her restraints and underwater, finds herself face to face with the shark. There's a moment between them as they stare into one another's eyes, seemingly understanding the other's ordeal. The shark decides not to strike. In fact, this shark is battered with scars and sports a nasty gash over its face, a result of Tucker's meddling earlier on. Zephyr makes it back to the boat and outsmarts Tucker, shooting him with a harpoon gun and sending him into the water. The hunter becomes the hunted, as Zephyr watches as the shark grabs Tucker and takes a big ol' chomp out of his side. The same shark that Tucker stabbed with the harpoon gun earlier on. How does Dangerous Animals end? With Tucker dead, we pan across to his camcorder where we ironically find out that his death has been filmed the whole time. In the end, Bruce becomes the final victim in his twisted mausoleum of death. Zephyr and Moses both survive their encounter, thanks to Zephyr firing off some emergency flares to prompt the nearby party boat to turn round and save them. Zephyr realizes she does have something to live for in Moses, and after professing this to him, the pair await rescue as the movie ends. Read More: Dangerous Animals Movie Review
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Back in shark-laden waters, 'Dangerous Animals' is a horror film with tired blood
Sean Byrne knows how to show an audience a bad time. Sixteen years ago, the Australian filmmaker launched onto the scene with 'The Loved Ones,' his proudly grisly debut about a misfit teenager who gets gruesome revenge on the boy who refused to go to prom with her. Part expert torture porn, part exploration of adolescent romantic anxieties, the film was an instant midnight-madness cult item that took Byrne six years to follow up. When he did, he went in a different tonal direction with 'The Devil's Candy,' a surprisingly emotional psychological thriller about a heavy-metal-loving painter who moves his family to a beautifully rustic home, only to lose his mind. Working in recognizable horror subgenres, Byrne entices you with a familiar premise and then slowly teases apart the tropes, leaving you unsettled but also invigorated by his inventiveness. It has now been a decade since that distinctive riff on 'The Shining,' and for Byrne's third feature, he once again pillages from indelible sources. 'Dangerous Animals' draws from both the serial-killer thriller and Hollywood's penchant for survival stories about hungry sharks feasting on human flesh. But unlike in the past, Byrne's new movie never waylays you with a surprise narrative wrinkle or unexpected thematic depth. He hasn't lost his knack for generating bad vibes, but this time he hasn't brought anything else to the party. The movie stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, a solitary surfer who explains in on-the-nose dialogue that she prefers the danger of open water to the unhappiness of life on land. An American in Australia who grew up in foster homes and who lives in a beat-up old van, Zephyr encounters Moses (Josh Heuston), a straitlaced nice guy whom she hooks up with. Not that she wants him developing feelings for her: She takes off in the middle of the night so she can catch some waves. Unfortunately, Zephyr is the one who gets caught — by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a deceptively gregarious boat captain who kidnaps her. Next thing she knows, she's chained up inside his vessel out at sea, alongside another female victim, Heather (Ella Newton). Read more: The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles Like many a movie serial killer, Tucker isn't just interested in murdering his prey — he wants to make something artistic out of his butchery. And so he ties Heather to a crane and dangles her in the water like a giant lure, pulling out a camcorder to record her final moments as sharks devour her. Watching his victims struggle to stay alive is cinema to this twisted soul and Zephyr will be his next unwitting protagonist. Working from a script by visual artist Nick Lepard, Byrne (who wrote his two previous features) digs into the story's B-movie appeal. Tucker may use old-fashioned technology to record his kills, but 'Dangerous Animals' is set in the present, even if its trashy, drive-in essence would have made it better suited to come out 50 years ago as counterprogramming to "Jaws." With Zephyr's tough-girl demeanor and Tucker's creepy vibe, Byrne knowingly plays into genre clichés, setting up the inevitable showdown between the beauty and the beast. But despite that juicy setup, 'Dangerous Animals' is a disappointingly straightforward and ultimately underwhelming horror movie, offering little of the grim poetry of Byrne's previous work and far too much of the narrative predictability that in the past he astutely sidestepped. There are still subversive ideas — for one thing, this is a shark film with precious few sharks — but Byrne's sneaky smarts have largely abandoned him. Rather than transcending expectations, 'Dangerous Animals' surrenders to them. One can't fault Harrison, whose Zephyr spends much of the movie in a battle of wills with her captor. Because 'Dangerous Animals' limits the amount of sharks we see, digitally inserting footage of the deadly creatures into scenes, the story's central tension comes from Zephyr trying to free herself or get help before Tucker prepares his next nautical snuff film. Harrison projects a ferocious determination that's paired with an intense loathing for this condescending, demented misogynist. It's bad enough that Tucker wants to murder her — beforehand, he wants to bore her with shark trivia, dully advocating for these misunderstood animals. It's an underdeveloped joke: 'Dangerous Animals' is a nightmare about meeting the mansplainer from hell. Alas, Courtney's conception of the film's true dangerous animal is where the story truly runs aground. The actor's handsome, vaguely blank countenance is meant to suggest a burly, hunky everyman — the sort of person you'd never suspect or look twice at, which makes Tucker well-positioned to leave a trail of corpses in his path. But neither Byrne nor Courtney entirely gets their arms around this conventionally unhinged horror villain. 'Dangerous Animals' overly underlines its point that we shouldn't be afraid of sharks — it's the Tuckers who ought to keep us up at night — but Courtney never captures the unfathomable malice beneath the facial scruff. We root for Zephyr to escape Tucker's clutches not because he's evil but because he's a bit of a stiff. Even with those deficiencies, the film boasts a level of craft that keeps the story fleet, with Byrne relying on the dependable tension of a victim trapped at sea with her pursuer, sharks waiting in the waters surrounding her. Michael Yezerski's winkingly emphatic score juices every scare as the gore keeps ratcheting up — particularly during a moment when Zephyr finds an unexpected way to break out of handcuffs. But Byrne can't redeem the script's boneheaded plot twists, nor can he elevate the most potentially intriguing idea at its core. As Tucker peers into his viewfinder, getting off on his victims' screams as sharks sink their jaws into them, 'Dangerous Animals' hints at the fixation horror directors such as Byrne have for presenting us with unspeakable terrors, insisting we love the bloodshed as much as they do. Tucker tries to convince Zephyr that they're not all that different — they're both sharks, you see — but in truth, Byrne may be suggesting an uncomfortable kinship with his serial killer. But instead of provocatively pursuing that unholy bond, the director only finds chum. Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Back in shark-laden waters, ‘Dangerous Animals' is a horror film with tired blood
Sean Byrne knows how to show an audience a bad time. Sixteen years ago, the Australian filmmaker launched onto the scene with 'The Loved Ones,' his proudly grisly debut about a misfit teenager who gets gruesome revenge on the boy who refused to go to prom with her. Part expert torture porn, part exploration of adolescent romantic anxieties, the film was an instant midnight-madness cult item that took Byrne six years to follow up. When he did, he went in a different tonal direction with 'The Devil's Candy,' a surprisingly emotional psychological thriller about a heavy-metal-loving painter who moves his family to a beautifully rustic home, only to lose his mind. Working in recognizable horror subgenres, Byrne entices you with a familiar premise and then slowly teases apart the tropes, leaving you unsettled but also invigorated by his inventiveness. It has now been a decade since that distinctive riff on 'The Shining,' and for Byrne's third feature, he once again pillages from indelible sources. 'Dangerous Animals' draws from both the serial-killer thriller and Hollywood's penchant for survival stories about hungry sharks feasting on human flesh. But unlike in the past, Byrne's new movie never waylays you with a surprise narrative wrinkle or unexpected thematic depth. He hasn't lost his knack for generating bad vibes, but this time he hasn't brought anything else to the party. The movie stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, a solitary surfer who explains in on-the-nose dialogue that she prefers the danger of open water to the unhappiness of life on land. An American in Australia who grew up in foster homes and who lives in a beat-up old van, Zephyr encounters Moses (Josh Heuston), a straitlaced nice guy whom she hooks up with. Not that she wants him developing feelings for her: She takes off in the middle of the night so she can catch some waves. Unfortunately, Zephyr is the one who gets caught — by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a deceptively gregarious boat captain who kidnaps her. Next thing she knows, she's chained up inside his vessel out at sea, alongside another female victim, Heather (Ella Newton). Like many a movie serial killer, Tucker isn't just interested in murdering his prey — he wants to make something artistic out of his butchery. And so he ties Heather to a crane and dangles her in the water like a giant lure, pulling out a camcorder to record her final moments as sharks devour her. Watching his victims struggle to stay alive is cinema to this twisted soul and Zephyr will be his next unwitting protagonist. Working from a script by visual artist Nick Lepard, Byrne (who wrote his two previous features) digs into the story's B-movie appeal. Tucker may use old-fashioned technology to record his kills, but 'Dangerous Animals' is set in the present, even if its trashy, drive-in essence would have made it better suited to come out 50 years ago as counterprogramming to 'Jaws.' With Zephyr's tough-girl demeanor and Tucker's creepy vibe, Byrne knowingly plays into genre clichés, setting up the inevitable showdown between the beauty and the beast. But despite that juicy setup, 'Dangerous Animals' is a disappointingly straightforward and ultimately underwhelming horror movie, offering little of the grim poetry of Byrne's previous work and far too much of the narrative predictability that in the past he astutely sidestepped. There are still subversive ideas — for one thing, this is a shark film with precious few sharks — but Byrne's sneaky smarts have largely abandoned him. Rather than transcending expectations, 'Dangerous Animals' surrenders to them. One can't fault Harrison, whose Zephyr spends much of the movie in a battle of wills with her captor. Because 'Dangerous Animals' limits the amount of sharks we see, digitally inserting footage of the deadly creatures into scenes, the story's central tension comes from Zephyr trying to free herself or get help before Tucker prepares his next nautical snuff film. Harrison projects a ferocious determination that's paired with an intense loathing for this condescending, demented misogynist. It's bad enough that Tucker wants to murder her — beforehand, he wants to bore her with shark trivia, dully advocating for these misunderstood animals. It's an underdeveloped joke: 'Dangerous Animals' is a nightmare about meeting the mansplainer from hell. Alas, Courtney's conception of the film's true dangerous animal is where the story truly runs aground. The actor's handsome, vaguely blank countenance is meant to suggest a burly, hunky everyman — the sort of person you'd never suspect or look twice at, which makes Tucker well-positioned to leave a trail of corpses in his path. But neither Byrne nor Courtney entirely gets their arms around this conventionally unhinged horror villain. 'Dangerous Animals' overly underlines its point that we shouldn't be afraid of sharks — it's the Tuckers who ought to keep us up at night — but Courtney never captures the unfathomable malice beneath the facial scruff. We root for Zephyr to escape Tucker's clutches not because he's evil but because he's a bit of a stiff. Even with those deficiencies, the film boasts a level of craft that keeps the story fleet, with Byrne relying on the dependable tension of a victim trapped at sea with her pursuer, sharks waiting in the waters surrounding her. Michael Yezerski's winkingly emphatic score juices every scare as the gore keeps ratcheting up — particularly during a moment when Zephyr finds an unexpected way to break out of handcuffs. But Byrne can't redeem the script's boneheaded plot twists, nor can he elevate the most potentially intriguing idea at its core. As Tucker peers into his viewfinder, getting off on his victims' screams as sharks sink their jaws into them, 'Dangerous Animals' hints at the fixation horror directors such as Byrne have for presenting us with unspeakable terrors, insisting we love the bloodshed as much as they do. Tucker tries to convince Zephyr that they're not all that different — they're both sharks, you see — but in truth, Byrne may be suggesting an uncomfortable kinship with his serial killer. But instead of provocatively pursuing that unholy bond, the director only finds chum.
Irish Examiner
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Film review: Documentary executive produced by Macklemore 'a gripping account of speaking truth to power'
Dangerous Animals ★★★☆☆ Humans are the most rapacious predators on the planet, of course, but what if a human was to double down on his lethal potential by teaming up with a shark? That's the basic idea behind Dangerous Animals (16s), which stars Hassie Harrison as Zephyr, an American surfer bumming around Australia chasing the next big wave. Enter Tucker (Jai Courtney), a bluff and good-natured captain of a charter boat that allows tourists to swim with sharks from the safety of an iron cage. In his downtime, alas, Tucker has a nasty habit of abducting young women and spiriting them off to sea before feeding them to the sharks and recording the ensuing carnage. But when he kidnaps Zephyr off a quiet beach in the early hours before dawn, Tucker has no idea that he has bitten off more than even his beloved sharks can chew… Written by Nick Lepard and directed by Sean Byrne, Dangerous Animals offers a nautical variation on Australia's fascination with the lunatic Outback killer. Hassie Harrison in Dangerous Animals (2025) As always, we are given very little by way of the killer's motivation – Tucker, we learn early, is a shark attack survivor, although that hardly explains his misogynistic obsession with cold-bloodedly murdering young women in such a grisly fashion. And grisly it most definitely is: the scene in which Zephyr's fellow captive Heather (Ella Newton) dies in the midst of a feeding frenzy is deeply disturbing, and not least because it's being filmed for the purpose of entertainment. Nick Lepard and Sean Byrne may well be making a point here about the wholesale slaughter of young women in exploitative horror flicks; if they are, it's clumsily made and gratuitously gruesome. That said, Jai Courtney is charmingly avuncular (at least initially) as the psychopathic Tucker, although Hassie Harrison makes a much more impressive splash as the smart, tough and brilliantly resourceful Zephyr. (theatrical release) The Encampments ★★★★★ The Encampments (12A) is a documentary by Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman that opens in April 2024 with students on the lawn of Columbia University protesting the slaughter in Gaza, declaring their solidarity with Palestine, and demanding that the university divest the portion of its endowments that is invested in US and Israeli weapons companies. The protest goes viral, resulting in encampments springing up in universities all over America and further afield, but the majority of the film plays out at Columbia, where the students quickly find themselves besieged by the university administration, the NYPD and those in the media who allege antisemitism and terrorism. Linking the events to similar, anti-Vietnam War protests at Columbia in 1968, Pritsker and Workman provide context with a potted history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, and also include heart-breaking footage from the war in Gaza. It can be argued that the filmmakers, who make no secret of the fact that they were embedded with the protestors, are offering only one side of this particular story; nevertheless, The Encampments is a gripping account of speaking truth to power. (theatrical release) Juliet and Romeo ★★☆☆☆ Juliet and Romeo (12A) stars Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward as the star-crossed lovers, although writer-director Timothy Scott Bogart substitutes contemporary speech for Shakespeare's poetry, inserts a number of rousing (if rather bland) pop anthems into the story, and provides a backdrop of imminent invasion to add spice to Verona's long-running civil war between Capulet and Montague. Juliet & Romeo, the pop musical, stars Clara Rugaard as Juliet and Jamie Ward as Romeo. It's a bold attempt at a modern makeover, and there's some interesting character actors in the supporting roles: Rupert Everett delivers an arch Lord Capulet, Derek Jacobi hams it up unmercifully as Friar Lawrence, while Jason Isaacs mooches around in the background muttering Lord Montague's premonitions of impending doom. The leads, alas, lack chemistry. Clara Rugaard shines as the irreverent Juliet, but Jamie Ward is vacuous as Romeo, and overall the timeless tragedy of fair Verona is largely reduced to an extended '80s pop video. (theatrical release)
