Why sharks remain cinema’s most ter­ri­fy­ing antagonists

In a sum­mer beset by under­whelm­ing and under-per­form­ing releas­es, The Shal­lows arrives in the UK hav­ing already become a sur­prise hit across the pond. On the sur­face, its win­ning for­mu­la is noth­ing new – direc­tor Jaume Collet-Serra’s sus­pense­ful horror/​thriller sees a biki­ni-clad Blake Live­ly try to out­wit a ter­ri­fy­ing great white tan­ta­lis­ing­ly close to shore. Yet favourable reviews and an impres­sive box office per­for­mance mark this as yet anoth­er strong case for adding a shark into the mix.

To under­stand why this par­tic­u­lar screen antag­o­nist con­tin­ues to endure, you have to go back to the ori­gins of sum­mer movies them­selves, and the birth of the mod­ern block­buster. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws gave ter­ror its own theme tune, cre­at­ing an icon­ic movie vil­lain that per­suad­ed an entire gen­er­a­tion to think twice before going back into the water, one which still fas­ci­nates audi­ences today. Numer­ous Jaws sequels fol­lowed, all of which found some degree of finan­cial suc­cess, while the likes of Deep Blue Sea, Open Water and oth­ers have brought audi­ence flock­ing to mul­ti­plex­es like tourists to Ami­ty Beach.

One expla­na­tion for the pop­u­lar­i­ty of shark movies is their sim­plic­i­ty. Jaws’ dead-eyed antag­o­nist didn’t attack The Orca because of some per­son­al vendet­ta; it wasn’t work­ing out any Dad­dy Issues or seek­ing revenge. Sharks attack peo­ple because, in the movies at least, that’s just what sharks do. They are mer­ci­less killing machines – supreme preda­tors which, to para­phrase Michael Caine’s Alfred from The Dark Knight, ​“can’t be bought, bul­lied, rea­soned, or nego­ti­at­ed with.”

The movie shark’s sec­ond strength is the mun­dan­i­ty of its sur­round­ings. Great hor­ror has the abil­i­ty to manip­u­late cer­tain envi­ron­ments, objects and set­tings which are sup­posed to make us feel safe, there­by mak­ing us realise how vul­ner­a­ble we tru­ly are. Fright­en­ing crea­tures invade our bed­rooms, our dreams, and in this case a day at the beach. Shark movies are so effec­tive because they tap into a prim­i­tive, uni­ver­sal fear. Regard­less of where we hap­pen to be tak­ing a dip, there’s always that lin­ger­ing sense of trep­i­da­tion that a shark might be lurk­ing just beneath the sur­face. Jaws 2 famous­ly played on this with its tagline, ​‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…’ Open Water, which sees a cou­ple strand­ed in shark-infest­ed seas, took this one step fur­ther by loose­ly bas­ing its sto­ry on real life, the film’s tan­gi­ble con­nec­tion with real­i­ty mak­ing it all the more intense.

Just as Antho­ny Perkins was nev­er able to cast off Nor­man Bates, and Christo­pher Lee spent much of his career in the shad­ow of Drac­u­la, so too do these films con­tin­ue to plague the shark world. Many sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals have drawn a direct link between the suc­cess of shark movies and the decline in shark pop­u­la­tions around the world – on aver­age around 100 mil­lion sharks are killed by humans every year, in stark con­trast to the six humans killed by sharks in 2015. A som­bre but salient reminder of the impact cin­e­ma can have on the wider world.