Underseen Horror Movie ‘Dangerous Animals’ Finds Its Audience on Streaming

The horror genre is certainly having one heck of a 2025 at the box office. Weapons, Sinners, 28 Years Later, and The Conjuring: Last Rites have exceeded all expectations, becoming massive hits along the way. That being said, there have definitely been a few smaller films that garnered critical acclaim that didn’t necessarily make big waves in theaters, but have found success on streaming. Case in point: Dangerous Animals, the phenomenal survival horror movie that is perhaps one of the most criminally underseen movies of the year.

Directed by Sean Byrne from a script penned by Nick Lepard, Dangerous Animals stars Hassie Harrison, Josh Heuston, and Jai Courtney. Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the film’s U.S. distribution rights were picked up by IFC and Shudder, who released it theatrically on June 6, 2025. Produced on a budget of just $2 million, it managed to take in a little over $7 million during its brief run in cinemas, which isn’t huge by any means, but not bad for a little indie movie that virtually no one had heard of.

Featuring a deliciously unhinged performance by Courtney as the maniacal Tucker, Dangerous Animals centers around Zephyr (Harrison), a rebellious surfer who is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer, held captive on his boat, and must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below. It truly is the stuff of nightmares thanks to the tremendous performances from the cast, and because of Byrne’s excellent direction that balances just the right amount of tension and terror to deliver a memorable movie from start to finish. After a decade away from features following his excellent 2015 film The Devil’s Candy, Dangerous Animals is one of those movies that makes you hope he doesn’t disappear for another 10 years.

Dangerous Animals’ Is Better Than Most Mainstream Horror Movies This Year

While it’s easy to say that it must not be as good as its studio counterparts because Dangerous Animals didn’t rake in the amount of money that films like The Conjuring or Final Destination did, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Byrne’s return is head and shoulders above a lot of the mainstream movies that came out in 2025, but no one’s willing to say it.

Let’s be honest, The Conjuring delivered a carbon copy of pretty much every other film in the franchise, but because it was dubbed as the last entry in “Phase 1” of the series and had more than a decade of brand recognition behind it, it went on to have the best opening weekend for a horror movie in history. Does that mean it’s better than Dangerous Animals? Well, the former holds a rating of just 57% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter is Certified Fresh with an 87%. If you judge the two films based on that, then no, The Conjuring is certainly not better.

That’s the rub, though. Taste is subjective, and what one person likes, another may despise. Still, if you ask any horror fan who has seen both, we’re almost certain that nine times out of 10 they’ll say that Dangerous Animals was the better of the two flicks for the simple reason that it brought something fresh and new to the genre, and didn’t rely on tired old jump scares to get by.

Unfortunately, because it didn’t have the backing of a major studio, not a lot of people have seen Dangerous Animals to be able to compare the two, but thankfully, it’s finally getting the recognition it deserves on streaming, as it’s now the #2 movie on AMC+ per Flix Patrol, which keeps track of daily streaming rankings. If you’re a horror fan, do yourself a favor and give this one a watch ASAP, and you’ll quickly see why it should get way more love than it has. Trust us, you won’t be disappointed, and will most likely come away hoping that Courtney plays more horror villains down the road, because his performance as the unhinged Tucker is second to none.