For nearly half a century, the shark movie has proved itself as a well-swum path that will deliver screams, profits and, occasionally, storytelling magic. It’s no wonder that shark movies have become a Hollywood staple. They’re incredibly successful, largely due to their unpretentiousness, and span cinematic classics, to indie projects such as The Reef, to the absurd, high-octane, unashamedly camp Sharknado and Shark Attack franchises.
And then there’s also Shark Exorcist.
The most commercially successful example from the last decade is The Meg. The film has landed on UK Netflix this month, and it features Jason Statham battling a twenty-three-metre-long megalodon for 113 minutes. Released in 2018, it had a $178 million budget, and clinched a rather meaty $530 million dollars at the Box Office, despite the film holding a score of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes and being nominated for a Golden Raspberry. Time and time again, shark movies have proven to be summer blockbusters. The Meg is also a movie that spent 20 years in development hell, by the way, so there’s a lesson in that for all of us.
Now, let’s talk about the great white in the room: Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic, JAWS. Richard Dreyfuss famously declared: “We started without a script, without a cast and without a shark”. And production seems to have been stressful at best. Despite tensions between its cast, an escalating budget and a mechanical shark called Bruce who refused to work, Spielberg and team achieved an aquatic success that provided the tentpole features that would go on to dominate the summer filmgoing experience — huge earners that capture both the zeitgeist and substantial audiences. Driven by saturation marketing, the film redefined what a hit was both in terms of profitability and cultural impact.
Unable to get the shark action shots he wanted, Spielberg worked with editor Verna Fields to create tense sequences in which what we don’t see is more important that what we do. Meanwhile, composer John Williams utilised the gaps where the shark was missing with an ominous score (of mostly two notes) that has become synonymous with screen terror. The result was pure magic, summed up by an unforgettable opening sequence featuring poor Susan Backline.
It’s no wonder one of the film’s most memorable tag-lines was “see it before you go swimming!” There are countless tense sequences: Ben Gardner’s WHOLE HEAD emerging from the deep, and Matt Hooper surviving an attack in a shark-cage are two moments that stand out. Spielberg’s brilliantly structured spine-chiller struck a nerve with young audiences whose natural habitat was not the beach, but the shopping mall. And history was made.
But it didn’t just end there. Jaws spawned three sequels and is the inspiration for another 180+ shark movies. So what is intrinsically appealing about watching helpless swimmers meet their terrifying end? What are the ingredients that make this subgenre of horror so successful? And how do you write a shark movie with bite?
Before we dive into the depths of it, it’s important to note that shark movies are not the authority on sharks. For starters, as long as there have been monsters in movies, those monsters have roared, sharks included, but sharks actually have no sound-producing organs at all.Secondly, sharks are not vampires. Contrary to popular belief, sharks are not attracted to human blood. They’re more likely to be attracted to a “bleeding fish or sea lion” than a human being with a cut in the ocean.
And finally, actively hunting and mauling people, is just not something that most sharks are into. We know that the majority of attacks occur as a result of mistaken identity, or feeling threatened by the unusual presence of a human. So the ‘shark’ in a shark movie isn’t really a shark, just as King Kong isn’t a gorilla.
Despite what the movies lead us to believe, sharks are mainly non-aggressive creatures who aren’t evil killing machines. They’re certainly not an unstoppable force — humans kill a staggering 100 million sharks each year, that’s 11,000 sharks every single hour, mainly due to high demand for shark fins. Furthermore, you’re statistically more likely to die from a hotdog related accident than from a shark attack.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the PR problem that sharks have (this particular brand of horror movie has lots to answer for on that front) and I want to point you in the direction of a couple of great charities, working to combat the problems sharks face. Both The Shark Trust and Fin Fighters are charities working within the UK to safeguard the future of sharks through positive change, and Shark Spotters is a pioneering shark safety program in Cape Town, that focuses on solutions to shark-human conflicts.
However, when all is said and done, there’s no denying that sharks make fantastic horror movie villains and the best movies of the genre give you the big 3: thrills, kills and gills.
Let’s break it down.
WHY DO SHARK MOVIES WORK WHEN THEY WORK?
If you drill down into the bones of a shark movie, what you’ll find is a humans vs nature narrative. Stories that pit a protagonist against ominous terrors of the deep have been a mainstay of folklore for centuries: kraken, mermaids, Moby Dick, tentacled horrors, sea draugrs and Jonah and the Whale all have their place in legend. Each of these watery antagonists are key to narratives about heroes triumphing over their fears, coming to terms with their humanity, and playing at being Bear Grylls.
In reality, we know our own battles with nature are only just beginning, and that our consumerism (and corrupt, destructive governments) are really the problem. That’s why the best shark movies know that the majority of humans deserve to get eaten. They also play on the fact that we’ve hardly explored any of the ocean. Less than 5% of the planet’s seas have been explored. That’s why they’re scary- we literally don’t know what’s lurking out there. Our relationship with the sea and what dwells beneath the waves is complex, and it’s what makes watching people clobber big fishy stuff and conquering the wilderness entertaining, reflective and transportive for the audience. But these stories also tap into a primal desire…
All films that fall into the natural horror category, whether they concern sharks, snakes, crocs or spiders, are all about beating nature at its own game. The desire to control the uncontrollable is, let’s face it, a flaw that a few of us recognise, and the good shark movies embed this into the main character and their battle with the monster.
The journey in any ‘beasty’ plot is as much internal as external, with the hero learning transferable skills like courage, resilience and resourcefulness whilst facing mortal danger. To be trite for a moment, these kinds of stories also remind us that no matter what challenges ‘we’ face in our lives, we can overcome them. They help us to believe that we will succeed.
Harking back to Jaws again, the underlying story is more complex than the terror of being lacerated at the beach. Its novel reads as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of extramarital sex and the inability of a weak father to protect his family and his community. As a film, it has been interpreted as everything from a depiction of masculinity in crisis to a post-Watergate parable about corruption. At the Jaws 40th Anniversary Symposium (De Montfort University, Leicester) the case was made that the film depicted the archetypal American villain as a queer dissident attacking the heteronormative, which is quite a pleasing version. However you see the nitty gritty of it, Jaws is a classic morality tale in which the watery fate of potential victims is sealed by their on-land behaviour. And really, so is every decent shark movie made since.
Like all man-versus-nature tropes, man-versus-shark movies can reveal important truths about human nature and serve as fascinating, in-depth character studies. However, the winning formula is that they do all this with a side of terrifying, razor-sharp choppers.
Which leads me on to my next observation.
the shark should be a ‘shark’
This may sound obvious, but a lot of shark films get this wrong. I know I said that shark movie sharks aren’t really sharks (already contradicting myself) but hear me out.
Sharks are big. They have teeth — extremely sharp teeth! They have scars, dead eyes and they stalk their prey. Let’s be honest, they tick a lot of horror movie archetypes. They’re also highly intelligent creatures, and we’ve all seen a video of them playing with a seal. Sharks swim into the shallow parts of the ocean where humans frolic. They are drawn to loud noises and activity in the water, and as we encroach on their habitats, attacks can go up. It’s possible, admittedly not probable, but it’s possible that they could be lurking in the water where you or the person you love are splashing about having a gay old time.
Even though sharks are almost never aggressive toward humans, the biggest ones have the power and the potential to chomp you in half. And the reality is, a small number of shark attacks inevitably do happen. The Indianapolis speech in Jaws is based on the real sinking of a navy ship and subsequent shark attacks on sailors stranded in the water. Additionally, Hooper’s shark-cage attack was the unplanned wrecking of an empty cage by a real-life predator (after which stuntman Carl Rizzo was reluctant to get back in the water). Whales are gentle giants. Sharks are a natural fit.
They are a good horror villain because even in this modern age, we still know surprisingly little about sharks. This perceived unknowability, combined with being an apex predator and our own myths fuelled by pop culture are what make the shark, particularly the great white shark, such a great antagonist. They’re an omnipresent threat waiting to happen, in a mysterious blue setting that humans are still learning to voyage.
As I mentioned earlier, none of this is great for actual sharks. There is an element of public misunderstanding that arises from these tropes and can actually threaten endangered shark species. Research showed that when you’re shown frightening shark images and videos, you’re less likely to support shark conservation, and that’s a problem. It’s why some folks prefer films like Shark Avalanche, Three-Headed Shark Attack and Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus as they are safely preposterous. Dr. David Shiffman, who inspired a character in the Meg book series, digs deep into some of this here.
Personally, I prefer it when my sharks are realistic. In Deep Blue Sea, an isolated underwater facility plunges into chaos when multiple genetically engineered sharks go on a rampage and flood the joint. It’s a lot of fun, but sharks with manipulated intelligence, or fantasy elements with humanoid sharks, are ultimately less interesting than an animal that has evolved for thousand of years deciding to bite back.
High budget special effects to recreate sharks, especially massive ones, I get, but I think at the end of the day the movie only works if you think that the shark, and therefore the threat, are genuine. I know it’s allegedly all about suspending your disbelief, but I don’t think the rule applies to shark movies. The shark can have a personality, it has to have nous, and it certainly helps if the shark has a morbid sense of humour, but it should stay firmly in the realm of what we collectively know about them, I believe. A shark doesn’t need bells and whistles.
keep the setting simple but the characters’ internal struggle complex
A setting where helpless humans are trapped with the hungry apex predator, in places where the latter has an upper hand are the scariest films! The simplest versions of these stories tend to involve scenarios where a group of people get trapped on a boat/in the sea, and one of them goes in the water and is totally unaware of the sharks that we all know are lurking. A feeding frenzy commences. Drawing on ‘authentic’ plots really helps with the fear factor. Bait is let down by its characters, but the plot centres around a group of people trying to escape a submerged grocery store as a result of a freak tsunami while being hunted by bloodthirsty great whites. I’m in.
That being said, you can’t just strand your characters in a kayak and hope for the best. The Reef features a monstrous great white shark stalking the crew of a capsized boat on the Great Barrier Reef. The exposed situation the characters find themselves in is believable, but when the shark finally appears at the 50 minute-mark we’re ready for most of the humdrum characters to be eaten, and that’s not what you want.
You don’t just want a handful of characters floating in an inexplicably calm sea for 90 minutes, slowly being picked off until the last hyperventilating survivor hauls themselves up onto a rock. It’s hard to maintain suspense when waiting for the next attack is literally all the viewer is doing.
A good example of what I mean is 47 Metres Down. Disregarding the dialogue, Johannes Roberts’ thalassophobia causing hellscape is much more than a shark movie- it is an underwater panic attack. Mandy Moore and Claire Hole star as sisters, Lisa and Kate, who end up trapped in a shark cage at the bottom of the ocean floor. From there, it becomes about whether they can escape with their lives and their fractured sisterly bond. The first-person perspective really helps us empathise with the characters, but the film also takes care to dial up the harsh realities of the situation: they're locked in a cage, their oxygen supply is dwindling, and they're staring down a nasty case of the bends.
The sisters must resolve their differences- the entire situation epitomises the fact Lisa’s overly cautious nature impedes her, and Kate should reconsider living impulse to impulse. Not only does the film have to resolve the tension between one sister’s assertive lead and the other’s passion for living, they have to escape the clutches of the shark! The two should be intrinsically linked- it’s why that flare scene in 47 Metres really puts you through the wringer.
SPOILERS: Lisa is forced to drag Kate to the surface of the water because she is injured. Kate’s blood, inevitably, attracts sharks. Gripping Kate with one arm and lighting flares with the other to ward off the predators, they have to ascend high enough for communications with the boat to kick in again. It’s tense.
By keeping the setting instantly recognisable and simple, you’re able to examine how the characters’ internal struggles/motivations are impeding/helping their attempts to escape the predators. Most of the time, it’s your protagonist’s own hubris that lands them in the situation in the first place.
Whilst re-watching Jaws, as Brody reopened the beaches, I couldn’t help but think of Rishi Sunak declaring that we should all be eating out to help out…
the shark should be the sole obstacle
When I say this, I mean that the shark should be the driving force of the film. Don’t get bogged down in complicated subplots that inevitably detract from the real issue at hand: the massive fucking shark just under the boat.
As for useless subplots in shark films, the list is endless. Jaws 3 has it all, a romance, a mother shark out for revenge, jet skis and meddling dolphins. The Meg is crammed with pseudo-science, a six-year-old to protect, family melodrama, villainous CEOs, a team of researchers, and two love interests for Jason Statham. Jaws: The Revenge bungles together a psychic shark connection, a sherrif’s widow, a trip to the Bahamas, and Michael Caine (who is very impressed by the house this Jaws sequel built) no less. It also spares all of its main characters from death— a major no no.
The narrative of Jaws explores a lot, sure. Toxic masculinity, anti-capitalist sentiment, man vs nature are all there, but the thematic exploration is always wrapped up in Brody et al. having to actively deal with the shark as it prowls the beaches during a busy summer. The crux of all this is, you don’t want your shark film to focus too much on the background gumpf, as you’ll then have to rely heavily on stupid characters making stupid decisions in order to make anything happen.
That is why, for my money, the second-best shark movie ever made (apologies Sharktopus stans) is The Shallows, a tightly wound tale of survival, which is the catalyst for a woman’s reckoning with her own grief. Jaume Collet-Serra’s film stars Blake Lively as Nancy, who returns to her deceased mother's fav beach in an act of mourning, and Collet-Serra uses that grief as a backdrop for her trials of human strength.
Trapped a mere 200 metres from the shore, Lively gives a tremendous and physical performance in the action-hero role, and we literally watch her go through it whilst marooned on a large rock, with nothing but a small stretch of water and one gigantic shark between her and the beach. It also usurps many of the ‘women in wet bikinis’ tropes that have come to define the most mercenary contributions towards the genre.
In The Shallows, all Nancy has to do is get past the shark! Admittedly, we then have to endure some self-surgery, as story beats become harder and harder to find over the ninety minutes, but for the most part this is a sharp, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, foaming with scares/plenty of set-pieces, and the shark does get a few tasty snacks too. And it’s all built around the fact that, in the end, she is going to have to face the shark (and her grief) head on.
Look, your lead character can survive a ferocious shark attack without also having to overcome trauma and decide whether or not they want to be a doctor, but you can also have your cake and eat it if your story plays by a very simple rule: get to safety and don’t die.
make your kills count
Horror fans will tell you that who you kill and when is very important, but in a shark movie it’s even more crucial. The temptation to get one in early is real, Jaws famously did so and Dark Tide opens with yet another poor diver meeting a grizzly end. But sometimes holding off can let you build up much needed tension.
Fundamentally, it’s the who that is more important. By killing 6-year-old Alex Kitner so early on, Jaws propels its stakes sky-high. The horror of losing a child is more terrifying than any shark, setting up a pretty drastic situation for Chief Brody to resolve. Killing people that we care about, or have a strong emotional/societal reaction to, will pay dividends.
Equally, killing people we don’t care about will have the opposite effect. There is a fine line between too many killings, where the viewer becomes jaded and immune to shock, and the result is a film lacking in jeopardy. Surrounded tries to build a shark tale out of hedonistic entangled influencers, who are documenting their illegal snorkling trip to a protected cove for their vlog when their plane crashes, and the unlikable survivors are forced to contend with a pack of great whites. Because the film employs the trope of obnoxious characters not listening to each other in order to create the peril, the kills become a bit pointless.
I can also recommend rationing your bloodthirst. A few memorable kills are far better than ten boring ones.
And finally…
HOW IS IT RELEVANT?
Shark movies can be about a lot more than “bobbing and bloodbath”. There is space for shark movies to encounter the contemporary relevance of our fears of the sea and its inhabitants – through the encroaching ecological disasters of global warming, pollution and the threat of mass marine extinction. Just last week, it was reported that the climate crisis is forcing great whites to start feeding in new waters. The time is now! For both climate action, and a brilliant new shark movie. With all our pillaging of the natural world, surely sharks deserve a good, old fashioned revenge story?
I mentioned Rishi Sunak earlier, but there are countless examples throughout the pandemic of when those in charge have screamed GET BACK IN THE WATER, only to discover that their selfish and detail-lacking guidance has brought about more catastrophe. The modern day parallels are endless— the focus on short term solutions to problems that are already making their way into the shallows costs us all dearly. I think these films are the perfect metaphor for now, and I can’t wait for a shark movie to make me too scared to run a bath again.
Love Ben x
ONE MORE THING!
Renee Capozzola has become the first female Underwater Photographer of the Year winner after her stunning image (above) of blacktip reef sharks in French Polynesia scooped the award for 2021. The Guardian covered the prize, including more of the images here and they’re splendid.