Hopefully you’re not reading this on your phone at the beach.įew Jaws rip-offs are quite as bald-faced in their theft as Great White, an Italian production directed by Enzo G. One ground rule: To qualify, a film had to have a theatrical release, even if it’s just a token special screening (a loophole that allowed for the inclusion of this decade’s most influential shark movie). The following list begins in so-bad-it’s-good territory and ends with some genuinely scary confrontations with the perfect engines, the eating machines, the miracles of evolution that swim and eat and make little sharks (to paraphrase a movie not on this list that still looms large over every entry). So with this weekend’s release of 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, we decided to take stock of the genre. That said, there’s something to be said for a cheesy shark movie, even the ones that are little more than Jaws rip-offs. The subgenre has, at its best, found ways to step away from its inspiration, and this century has produced some truly compelling, thrilling spins on the form. It’s also undergone some curious mutations. Since then, the shark movie has had its ups and downs in popularity. Though there were films about sharks prior to Jaws, the shark film as a subgenre effectively begins with Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece. It worked once, right, so why couldn’t it work again? Others were even less coy about trying to play Jaws’ game and decided to go with a killer shark. The years after Jaws conquered the box office in 1975 saw an onslaught of man-versus-killer-animal films like Tentacles (killer octopus), Piranha (killer fish), Grizzly (killer bear), Alligator (killer ’gator), and Orca (killer killer whale). That’s bound to happen when you’re not just one of the most successful movies of all time, but also the movie that invented the modern blockbuster. Photo: Vulture, Lionsgate, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros.Īny hit movie is bound to inspire imitators, but few have inspired as many as Jaws.
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