by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

There are many different types of teenage girls: horse girls, theater girls, dance girls, and so on. But some of us are lucky enough to be Shark Girls. And that means I’ve spent two decades of my life absolutely fascinated by sharks. I love seeing them on screen and in person–though mostly in the safety of an aquarium because I don’t feel the need to encroach on their turf.

You simply can’t write about shark movies without writing about Jaws (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975). It’s against shark law. You probably know what Jaws is about. The film depicts, among other themes, conflict between capitalism and public safety. The mayor famously keeps the beach open when he knows there’s a shark nearby, which is an incredible depiction of greed over morality.

It’s also a take on the low-budget monster movie flick, but with a big budget and Spielberg at the helm. Jaws is magnificent filmmaking, made all the more interesting because the prop sharks rarely worked properly. It’s much scarier to not see the shark for the majority of the movie, which is why the shot up from the water is so iconic.

Over the next couple decades, there were many, many Jaws sequels, rip-offs, and references. Just the hint of dun-dun is enough to make people tense up…or laugh. (See Airplane (1980) for a very silly version of this.) Jaws set a major trend in filmmaking and, unfortunately, in misunderstanding how sharks behave. Peter Benchley, who wrote the book and co-wrote the film adaptation, spent many years later in his career advocating for shark conservation.

Then in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, shark movies started to come back into fashion. Not with any major blockbusters like Jaws, but films like Deep Blue Sea (dir. Renny Harlin, 1999) and Open Water (dir. Chris Kentis, 2003) do pretty well. The genre keeps on trucking.

Let’s take a brief detour to talk about animation. Of course, Finding Nemo (dir. Andrew Stanton, 2003) features Bruce, named after the shark models used in Jaws. As you might remember, he’s part of a group of sharks trying to rehab their image, reciting “fish are friends, not food.” But do you remember the visual nightmare that is Shark Tale (dirs. Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, and Rob Letterman, 2004), with its star-studded cast, including Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, and Jack Black? Certainly a movie that exists! My favorite thing about this movie is that it premiered at Cannes film festival, and Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, and Jack Black rode in on an inflatable shark.

And then there’s the Syfy Channel of it all. I, for one, was eagerly awaiting Sharktopus (dir. Declan O'Brien, 2010) and Sharknado ( dir. Thunder Levin, 2013) when they came out on Syfy. They’re very silly, low-budget flicks, but you can’t deny that they’re a fun time. Syfy had a regular schedule of original content by that time, and they were often conceptualized by throwing together certain words to form some kind of monster, and then a writer would have to come up with a treatment and eventual script to feature that monster.

Around that same time, Shark Night 3D (dir. David R. Ellis, 2011) came out, which might be the only movie that features a shark jumping out of the water to knock a man off a jet ski and eat him. But perhaps not! This is a very interesting film in that it takes on the sharks-in-unexpected-places concept with a new twist. Some of the townspeople were inspired by Shark Week and decided to put sharks in the lake and record people being eaten. Presumably for money? It’s such a funny, campy turn for a movie like this to make. I wish I’d been able to see it in 3D, to be honest. 

More recently, The Shallows (dir. Jaume Collet-Serra, 2016) is a modern interpretation of woman vs. monster, and it’s a tightly focused survival narrative, rather than a campy jaunt. This movie perfectly toes the line between the common “the real monster is grief” story and an actual shark movie thriller. Nancy (Blake Lively) is grieving her mother, trying to find meaning in her life by surfing at a secret beach her mom had been to, but she’s also, you know, facing off against a great white shark. Over the course of the movie, Nancy confronts losing her mom and finds her will to survive, giving the movie a throughline beyond “what’s that shark up to now?” It’s pretty much solely focused on Lively, though she does have a seagull sidekick. Lively does a great job carrying the film, and this is probably my favorite of the recent shark movies.

47 Meters Down (dir. Johannes Roberts, 2017) continues the trend of woman vs. monster, but now with more women! Two sisters, Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt), go on a shark cage diving trip, but the winch connecting the cage to the boat breaks. The cage sinks, you guessed it, 47 meters down to the ocean floor. This film takes on the “real monster is grief” theme, only this time it’s Lisa processing that her boyfriend broke up with her because she’s boring. I guess I understand how this lends itself to shark cage diving, since it’s not an activity for a boring person to do! Compared to some of the other grief monster flicks, it feels sort of, well, shallow. But the movie goes to interesting places, and it definitely gives The Shallows a run for its money as far as best use of a flare in a shark movie.

Knowing that the actors and crew were in a tank with shredded broccoli (which looks like sediment on camera) and milk (to block out some of the light shining into the tank), I do not envy the people who made this movie! But it was worth the effort as a great entry in the Shark Movie Canon.

The sequel, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019), is directed and written by the same team, and while it seems to often be held up as better than the first, I disagree. I like the tighter focus on the sisters rather than the sprawling set-up of the sequel, where four teenage girls are trapped in an underwater ruin with a blind shark.

And then there’s The Meg (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2018). This movie drags a bit to explain how a megalodon could still be alive in modern day and how it would find its way to the surface, but once it gets going, it’s a good time. And then there’s Jason Statham, action-movie staple, who keeps the movie moving along toward its bombastic conclusion. This one has similar themes to Jaws, but it aims for goofiness and over-the-top effects. The Meg lands somewhere between silly and serious, in a sweet spot for maximum audience enjoyment.

And the audience really enjoyed it! The Meg made tons of money at the box office, which led to, of course, a sequel film. The long-awaited Meg 2: The Trench comes out later this week, and I can only hope that it’s as fun as the previous (and that any and all dogs survive this one).

If you’d like to know even more about the shark movie genre, give Sharksploitation (dir. Stephen Scarlata, 2023) a watch. Now is the perfect time, since we’re between Shark Week and the Meg sequel releasing later this week. Not to mention The Shark Is Broken—a play co-written and starring Ian Shaw, whose father played Quint in Jaws—started performances on Broadway last week. The play focuses on the three main actors in the iconic film as it gets delayed once again due to shark prop issues.

As a Shark Girl, I’ve really enjoyed the renaissance of shark movies in the last decade or so. But it’s important to remember that these are real animals (most of the time), and the biggest threat to them is humanity. So watch a few shark flicks, think about the vastness of the ocean and how powerful these creatures are, and maybe even contemplate humanity’s role in ruining their habitat and villainizing sharks for just existing. And then go see some megalodons eat people, just for fun.