Did you know that sharks only account for about five to seven deaths worldwide every year? Whereas the mosquito is responsible for spreading diseases that kill nearly 100,000 times more victims?
As it turns out, most sharks aren’t even interested in human prey. Shark attacks are pretty rare and often due to mistaken identity. In fact, more humans kill sharks than sharks kill humans.
Bruce Tucker is well aware of those facts. That’s why he offers swimming-with-sharks excursions to local tourists. He hopes to educate people about the silent predators … and perhaps find some prey of his own.
Poor Heather didn’t stand a chance against Bruce. When she got on Bruce’s boat, she thought she was in for the experience of a lifetime. Swim with a predator and live to tell the tale.
Well, swim with a predator, at least.
See, nobody knew where Heather was. And since she was on bad terms with her mom, nobody was going to come looking for her either, once she went missing.
No, Heather was dead the moment she set foot on Bruce’s boat. But maybe Zephyr will fare a bit better. Sure, she’s a drifter with no family and no friends, but she’s also smart. She knows that if you stay still in the water, the shark will be less likely to mistake you for food. If you time it right, you can even get the upper hand on the shark.
And if Zephyr times this right, she might be able to do the same to Bruce.
After a traumatic childhood, Zephyr has isolated herself from the world. She prefers navigating the waves of the sea over waves of people. But then she meets another surfer named Moses. The two connect, and Moses’ willingness to listen, to treat her like a human being instead of an inconvenience, changes her perspective a bit. Perhaps there is something on land worth wading in for.
Someone makes a bold attempt to rescue Zephyr. She offers herself up in someone else’s place. And she acts bravely throughout the film, trying to save herself and others from Bruce.
Bruce says that God is in the sea. “Where it all began and where it all ends,” he intones. He also has a reverence for sharks.
There are a few jokes about Mormonism, since Moses wears an outfit that looks like typical Mormon missionary garb. Someone says, “Speak of the devil.”
Zephyr and Moses have sex, and we see partial nudity in this scene, with camera angles hiding critical anatomy. Later, they lounge around, covered only by sheets.
Many characters wear swimsuits, including bikinis. Bruce dances while wearing a robe over some briefs. Someone makes a crude joke about male genitals.
Bruce kidnaps two women, though it becomes clear he’s actually kidnapped and killed nearly 40 in total. To catch Heather, he stabs her traveling companion in the throat multiple times before pushing the young man into shark-infested waters. With Zephyr, he puts a plastic bag over her head, holding it down until she passes out.
Bruce handcuffs both Heather and Zephyr to metal cots in a watertight (read: soundproof) room on his boat. He doesn’t commit sexual assault, but his behavior toward them is certainly predatory in nature. We hear that he stalked Zephyr before kidnapping her. He leers at another woman, possibly considering her as his next victim. And he makes a fishing lure out of a lock of Heather’s hair. He deprives Zephyr and Heather of food and water. And when he finally offers them sustenance, it’s drugged, allowing him to move them without resistance.
From there, Bruce puts Heather in a harness attached to a crane. He then partially lowers her into the water, using chum to lure nearby sharks. Obviously, the sharks attack her flailing body, and she dies shortly after. We see one of her severed limbs floating nearby. And the next day, her head and shoulders are all that remain.
Zephyr, tied to a chair at the edge of the boat, is forced to witness this whole ordeal. Bruce films her and Heather’s reactions, later rewatching the video for entertainment. (And again, we see that he has videos of other women he’s killed, too.)
Throughout the film, other people are forced to contend with the sharks, too. A few people escape by simply remaining still until the sharks swim past. One woman manages to kick a shark in the head when it goes for her leg. But another guy is devoured by a particularly large bull shark. Bruce shows some tourists scars on his torso, the result of getting attacked by a shark when he was 7.
Elsewhere, Zephyr uses whatever weapons she can find. She fashions a shiv out of a bucket handle and stabs Bruce in the shoulder. Later, she manages to hit him in the chest with a harpoon gun. One guy is stabbed in the head with a harpoon, killing him instantly. Moses is stabbed in the gut multiple times. Bruce takes a knife to the hand at one point.
Zephyr purposely breaks her thumb in an attempt to escape her handcuffs. When that fails, she bites off her thumb, allowing her to slip the cuffs. She manages to swim to shore, but Bruce catches her before she can reach people, tackling her to the ground and covering her mouth and nose until she passes out again.
People are otherwise beaten up and knocked around. People use chum (unusable bits of bloody fish guts) to lure sharks. There are multiple jump scares throughout the film.
A guy tells some tourists a story about a shark that bit off a man’s genitals when he urinated overboard, though it’s unclear if this actually happened.
We hear roughly three dozen uses of the f-word. There are also instances of the s-word, “a–,” “d–k,” “h—,” “p-ss” and the British expletives “bloody” and “wanker.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused three times each, too.
Characters smoke marijuana and drink alcohol. Bruce grinds up sleeping pills to drug the women he kidnaps.
Sadly, it seems that Bruce’s serial murderer tendencies stem from the fact that he had a traumatic childhood. He was attacked by a shark when he was 7 years old because nobody was watching over him, which he says was a common occurrence. As a result, he looks for victims who don’t have anyone watching out for them, either.
Heather regrets a fight she had with her mom about taking a gap year before college—ironically, because her mom was worried something bad would happen to her. Zephyr, while sympathetic to Heather, also expresses derision toward Heather’s mother for trying to “control” Heather’s life.
We learn that Zephyr herself never had solid parent figures. She lived in multiple foster homes and also spent some time in juvenile detention.
A bucket serves as a toilet for Bruce’s captives.
Zephyr shoplifts, and Moses uses this information to blackmail her into helping him jump start his car.
Rule No.1 of traveling: Never tell a stranger that nobody knows where you are. Actually, that should just be a rule in general. And if that’s rule No. 1, then No. 2 is this: Always make sure someone knows where you are.
Now, I’m not saying that Bruce wouldn’t have targeted Heather or Zephyr if they’d done that, but it certainly would have made his job a lot harder. Bruce didn’t want to get caught, after all. He wanted to continue torturing and killing women. He saw himself as a shark, an apex predator. And he would do whatever it took to remain at the top of the food chain.
Between Bruce’s wave of serial-killing mania and the shark attacks that he provokes, there’s enough chum to churn even the steeliest of stomachs. You also get about three dozen f-words, some brief nudity and sex.
If viewers have the choice between swimming with some sharks and watching Dangerous Animals, your odds are definitely better with the sharks.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
