Newsletter | From The Meg To Deep Blue Sea, Why Shark Movies Have Us In Their Jaws

When it comes to adversaries in creature features, few are more formidable than the shark. Prahlad Srihari fishes in the deep waters for the films that get up close and personal with the predator.

A still from Meg 2: The Trench

This column was originally published as part of our newsletter The Daily Show on August 7, 2023. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)

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Duh...nuh. Duh...nuh. Dun Dun Dun Dun DUN DUN DUN DUN...

Make way, Barbenheimer. It’s Chompenheimer time.

Only this time, the dread comes not from the slowly increasing tempo of a two-note theme pulsing with the rhythm of our heartbeat. It comes from the sound of hearing our brain cells dying by the second. The phonetic approximation could very well be: Dumb...dumb...Dumb...dumb...Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb.

Jason Statham brings his brute-force macho, signature snarl and no-nonsense persona for another showdown against prehistoric killing machines from the briny deep in Ben Wheatley’s Meg 2: The Trench. Short for Megalodon, the giant shark was said to have prowled our oceans millions of years ago. Climate change, many scientists believe, led to the species’ extinction. With the same threat around the corner, Hollywood reanimated the Megalodon for a toothless eco-thriller in 2018.

The Meg if some might have missed it, was not a Little Women spinoff about the eldest March sister in pursuit of a tough guy with a cockney accent and a light bulb-shaped head. Loosely based on Steve Alten’s 1997 novel, the movie proposed at least one of the Megalodons survived by sticking to the depths of an uncharted world beneath the Mariana Trench. For the purpose of milking the cash-cow dry, the sequel proposes more than one might have, diving head first into sheer absurdity and seldom coming back up for air. If the Meg from the first movie dwarfed the great white of Jaws by at least 60-70 feet in length, the Megs (yes, plural) in the new movie are much bigger. Yet, these finned fiends have a way of sneaking up on the tiny humans. The trench may be the Earth’s darkest and deepest crevice, so deep your bones could literally dissolve. Unless you are Jason Statham and you can outswim beasts born and raised in the trenches, even without a pressurised exo-suit.

Related | Meg 2: The Trench & The Historic Stupidity Of A Prehistoric-Shark Sequel

When it comes to adversaries in creature features, few are more formidable than the shark: a streamlined predator gliding through the water slowly and steadily, stalking in dead silence with its lifeless eyes, and waiting patiently for the right opportunity to strike its prey with its powerful jaws and razor-sharp teeth. Oceans make up nearly three-fourths of the Earth’s surface world. When humans are sent into the ocean for whatever expedition, their position at the top of the food chain can’t be taken for granted. Not when they are exposed to elements eager to challenge their apex predator status. Being dethroned induces a deep paranoia: of being attacked by something which sees, hears and smells us well before we can. In Jaws Steven Spielberg tapped into this paranoia by capturing humans via the eye of the shark, showing unsuspecting characters with legs flailing in the water. A cut to a dorsal fin and a shadow encroaching, accompanied by a two-note bass ostinato, were enough to put everyone on edge.

Ever since Jaws bestowed on them the reputation of a relentless slasher villain, sharks have had an escalating PR crisis on their fins. Not just sharks, water became scary by association. The resultant global panic kept beachgoers glued to their deckchairs and wary of any body of water bigger than a bathtub. Despite repeated assurances of shark attacks being few and far between, the misrepresentation continues to hold a tight grip on the public imagination. Not even Pixar could do anything to reclaim the shark’s image as something more than predators. Bruce insists in Finding Nemo “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine,” only to yield to his biological design at the first scent of blood.

The success of Jaws set off a tsunami of shark movies. Filmmakers have gone from dipping their toes in the water to waterboarding us with every possible variant and mutation to boot. Sharks have gone from mechanical nightmares to CGI monstrosities. There is an entire B-movie canon of campy entries where the creatures have migrated well beyond their marine ecosystems. This fishy business has become an ouroboros, sinking its jaws into its own tail without end. A shiver of shark movies now lurks in every corner of the streaming universe. Among these are:

THE CHOMP-EM-UP COMEDIES

Shark-on-human carnage plays as one long tour-de-farce. Toothy beasts of the sea mutate into hybrids or disrupt the human ecosystem. Body counts tend to be high because no one cares too much about the characters who get chomped. Violence is undercut by the comedy of it all. The novelty lies in exactly what the title advertises: Shark in Venice (2008), Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009), Sharktopus (2010), Sand Sharks (2011), Snow Shark (2012), Swamp Shark (2011), Jurassic Shark (2012), Ghost Shark (2013), and Ouija Shark (2020). A couple of ideas for the studios if someone isn’t reverse-engineering them already: 1. Loan Shark; 2. Shark Trek.

Notable titles from the category include —

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Scientists at an underwater research lab attempt to find a cure for Alzheimer’s by tinkering with the brain mass of sharks. Only the genetically modified creatures grow too smart and don’t take kindly to being experimented upon. After quickly unionising, they go on a rampage. A now-iconic moment sees one super-shark jolt from the water and devour Samuel Jackson right in the middle of an impassioned speech. Renny Harlin’s movie is the sharksploitation equivalent of Jurassic Park: man looks to regulate nature for his own benefit; nature bites back with a vengeance.

Sharknado (2013)

A sea-minus effort in every sense of the word, Sharknado grew from an inside joke into a whole franchise. Sharks, and only the sharks, get swept up in a storm and get deposited everywhere: roads, bridges, piers, cars, the antennae of the Empire State building, etc. As it’s raining sharks, the threat turns airborne. Humans adapt accordingly with whatever weapon they can get a hand on, from chainsaws to baseball bats. With each entry, the franchise has stayed committed to its spectacular ridiculousness, adding elements like lightsabre battles, time travel and an interdimensional vortex.

Bait (2012)

When a tsunami strikes a coastal Australian town, shoppers at a flooded supermarket are trapped with two of the hungriest customers hunting in the aisles: a couple of great white sharks.

THE SHARKLY REALISTIC NIGHTMARES

If chomp-em-ups like Sharknado and Bait bring the sharks to where the humans live, the “this-could-actually-happen-to-you” kind of survival thrillers put the humans in the world of the sharks. Being survival thrillers, the second kind tends to play it straight. Good-looking actors are pitted against a bloodthirsty creature in the middle of an indifferent ocean. We watch humans deploy the limited resources at their disposal to escape and we scream at the screen whenever a shark is nearby. Titles of note include —

Open Water (2003)

Chris Kentis’s stripped-down thriller is loosely based on the true story of a couple who got left behind on a Great Barrier Reef scuba-diving excursion. As Daniel (Daniel Kintner) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) are forced to play the waiting game in shark-infested waters, the movie becomes a study of a relationship under strain. There is no bigger strain than sharks circling below. Blame games begin. Buried tensions resurface. Striving for a sense of documentary realism, Kentis filmed the actors with live sharks. Open Water cost $120,000 to make. Each Meg cost ten times that. No surprises as to which one better captures the raw dread of being trapped in the middle of nowhere with large predators at bay.

The Reef (2010)

As with Open Water an actual shark encounter inspired this Australian survival thriller. When their yacht capsises while sailing to Indonesia, a group of friends are left with two choices: wait for rescue on the overturned boat or swim to a nearby island. Option 2 of course comes with an asterisk in the form of a great white ready to pick them off one by one.

The Shallows (2016)

The great white in The Shallows is a bit of a glutton. There is an entire carcass of a humpback whale it can feast upon. But it has its eye on Blake Lively’s lone surfer like a horny teenage boy. The distance between safety and death is a matter of 200 yards. Therein lies the agony. Lively shares the screen with an unexpected co-star in a seagull she names Steven — a touch of comedy in another better-than-average shark movie that doesn’t numb us with digitised jeopardy free of any visceral tension.

47 Meters Down (2017)

Two sisters, Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt), go on a cage-diving expedition off the coast of Mexico to catch a sight of sharks up close. When the winch holding the cage breaks and the cage drops to the ocean floor, the experience turns into a holiday from hell. As neither of the siblings are Jason Statham, they can’t just race to the surface. The sudden drop in water pressure can cause what divers call the bends — an experience nowhere close to as pleasant as listening to the Radiohead album of the same name.

BUT THE UNDEFEATED CHOMPION IS STILL…

Jaws (1975)

Over the years, shark movies may have turned into self-aware parodies and CG-eyesores. But Jaws continues to hold ground as the gold standard of the subgenre. If the original Hollywood blockbuster were to be re-released tomorrow in theatres, it would still jangle the nerves. Audiences would still fall for each scare — hook, line and sinker. Jaws is a whale of a tale: about the uncaring force of the wild, about people who prize bottom-lines over lives, about the human drive to conquer and tame, about men and their dick-measuring contests. Above all, Jaws is the shark movie that started it all. The true and undefeated chompion.

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