A brilliant shark thriller with a twist is available to watch now

'What is most surprising about the horror thriller is what a bona fide crowdpleaser it manages to be.'

Such is the case with Nick Lepard and his script for the now-in-cinemas Dangerous Animals. It sees Lepard (who also wrote Longlegs director Osgood Perkins' next horror trip, Keeper) combine two of the most durable sub-genres - the shark survival horror and the serial killer thriller.

That's right! Dangerous Animals is a shark slasher.

Set in Australia's gorgeous Gold Coast, the film stars Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad) as Tucker, a boat captain who runs a business in which he takes tourists out to sea and enables them to swim with sharks from the safety of a protective cage.

Behind his affable, Jack the Lad, outward persona and his penchant for spouting shark facts, Tucker has a dark secret. He's a serial killer whose modus operandi is abducting women so that he can feed them to the ocean predators and record the resulting carnage.

Tucker gets more than he bargained for, however, when he sets his sights on Zephyr (Hassie Harrison in a star-making turn), a tough American surfer travelling by herself across Australia in a van.

Zephyr desperately tries to turn the tables on her captor before she is dropped in with the sharks. All the while, Moses (a likeable Josh Heuston) - a kindly local surfer who Zephyr had a one-night stand with the night before being taken - attempts to track her down.

Directed by Sean Byrne (who helmed the modern cult classics The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy), Dangerous Animals gives genre fans all the gorier spills and thrills they would expect and want, given the high-concept premise.

What is most surprising about the modest, straight-forward horror thriller, though, is what a bona fide crowdpleaser it also manages to be.

There are several claustrophobic, taut, breathless action sequences on Tucker's boat, where Zephyr tries to MacGyver her way out of her abductor's clutches. These scenes are sure to have audience members, no matter their genre preference, shrieking at the screen in excitement and terror.

On top of this, there is a surprising amount of romance. Harrison and Heuston have sizzling chemistry. Plus, the lengths Moses is willing to go to make sure Zephyr is safe, someone whom he has only known for half a day, make the pair's blossoming relationship very endearing.

Byrne and Lepard also strike the right tone in terms of humour, acknowledging the absurdity of the central situation while also depicting it in a relatively grounded, believable and thus, compelling way.

Most of Dangerous Animals' comedy comes at the expense of Courtney's serial killer Tucker, who thinks of himself as an alpha, even as he sings 'Baby Shark' and seemingly can't speak without rattling off facts about sharks.

And it's immensely satisfying to watch Zephyr cut him down to size both with her actions and with her words.

Putting a fresh twist on a classic sub-genre, Dangerous Animals is easily the best shark thriller in recent years.

It also has us eagerly anticipating whatever projects Byrne and Lepard are working on next.

Dangerous Animals is in cinemas now.