My Top Shark Flick Picks
I’m omitting Jaws…
I love fun entertainment. I want silly, I want stupid, I want mainstream for the masses media. I love artsy and meaningful, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I just want to turn my brain off and enjoy something without much depth. I’m a big fan of natural disaster movies, of monster movies, and of animal attack movies. I don’t care if they’re predictable, I’m still gonna jump, laugh, and be fully engulfed in the content I am watching. A subset of the animal attack genre is Shark attack, and my god do I love a good Shark thriller.
Now that Shark Week has ended and Summer still prevails we are in desperate need of shark content, don’t worry, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite shark movies. I have a healthy respect and fear of sharks, but that doesn’t mean I stay away from the ocean. I went Great White cage diving in South Africa two years ago, sadly, no sharks were seen. I was in Shark Alley, but ever since the Orcas started using the Great White’s livers as an amuse-bouche they haven’t been occupying the same waters. I was immensely disappointed to be in the cage, covered in chum, and being thrashed around on the side of the boat and see no sharks. I needed a consolation prize, and the closest I could get was shark films. I will not consider any sequels or the movie Jaws. These are listed in no particular order. Without Further Ado, let’s get Sharkie!
The Shallows
The Shallows is a thrilling and fun romp in the shark-infested waters of Mexico. It stars the lovely and effervescent Blake Lively and almost no one else. There are two other surfers on this remote and hidden beach, but they are wiped away from existence by our toothy antagonist. Lively’s Nancy is a Texas girl, just like yours truly, we get some family background, Nancy has run away from life after her mother died of what is assumed to be cancer, and is surfing a secret beach solo. The beach happens to be where her mother surfed when she was younger, and Nancy is paying homage to her recently deceased mother. Our co-star, the shark, enters the screen around the 23-minute mark, and unfortunately for Nancy, doesn’t really leave. The shark injures Nancy while she’s surfing, she manages to swim to a teeny island, where she uses her medical knowledge to tend to her wound the best she can. She is accompanied by a shark-injured bird named Steven Seagull, who is an adorable counterpart. (I can confirm the bird is a paid actor.) She’s just 200 yards from the shore, but her finned nemesis lurks. Can Nancy outlast the Great Whites’ interest, or will she become fish food?
47 Meters Down
47 Meters Down made me want to go Great White cage diving. That probably tells you more than you need to know about who I am as a person. This movie stars Mandy Moore and Claire Holt as sisters on a vacation together in Mexico. Holt’s Kate is the free and adventurous sister and convinces Moore’s Lisa to go out on a boat for a private cage dive with a man she met at a bar. Lisa does not want to be doing any of this but agrees because of the persistence of her sister. They get into the cage, which is attached to a crank, and they are lowered down. Things go awry and they find themselves trapped at the bottom of the ocean, with the sharks they had been chumming the waters to see, circling them. This is a fast-paced thriller with an unexpected ending.
Open Water
This movie is a low-budget thriller based on true events. Eileen and Tom, a married couple, are scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, but when they surface the tour boat is gone. This movie is a dramatic interpretation of what may have happened to the couple because they were never found. This movie is a psychological thriller that is only exacerbated by knowing the events could very well be what happened. The tiger sharks that begin circling the couple only add to the tension. With nowhere to hide and nowhere to go the couple must do whatever they can to survive the night.
Deep Blue Sea
Deep Blue Sea is the first shark movie I watched, and I was hooked. It played on cable constantly in the early 00’s and the premise was brilliant to eight year old me. Scientists are injecting Mako sharks with some proprietary compound that does some science magic in their brains and creates something that can cure Alzheimer's in humans(Can you tell I am up to date on my science speak?). The other thing these scientists do is…makes the sharks hyper intelligent! You know what scientists, cut your shit out, no one needs 2,000 pounds of angry teeth to have more brain power. The sharks begin to hunt the scientists and other workers in the underwater complex. This movie is cheesier than Wisconsin, and I love every minute. This movie was a thriller for me as a child, but now, worn and weary in my age, this movie is a borderline comedy.
The Meg
The Meg is a film that asks, what if this conspiracy theory is true. If you don’t know what I’m talking about let me enlighten you. There are some people who believe that the megalodon, a prehistoric gigantic shark, is not extinct, but swims among the deepest depths of the ocean, feeding so deep into the sea that no one has seen them. Scientists have made a few great points as to why this cannot be the case. We would at some point in the last hundred years see some evidence, a tooth, a carcass, a giant bite out of some prey. None of this exists, and if you bring up sea monsters, and how it could be one of them then I will counter that often sea monsters are: whale dicks. Moving on… this movie makes a scientific reach as to how a megalodon could be among us. A high-tech diving team goes so deep into the ocean that it punctures a hydrogen wall, and upon leaving creates a sort of path that allows a megalodon to swim through this barrier and begin wrecking havoc among the oceans and beachgoers. Jason Statham’s Jonas is the lead, followed by a decently stacked cast of B-list actors. This film takes the fear of sharks and multiplies it by making the shark larger than ever before. I always giggle when a film takes itself too seriously, and I think The Meg definitely does this. Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable shark flick pick, giving you both silly and thrilling moments, and begs the question to beachgoers: What if something big and dangerous is lurking right beneath you?
Did I get all the shark flicks you would choose for your list? How do you feel about shark films? Do you think they’re overdone or can they still be fun? Sound off in the comments and I’ll “see” you next time!
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