Deliver the money shot. Is that so hard? Apparently, for many working in the sharksploitation subgenre — or, “shark movies,” as they’re more colloquially known — a little audience service is out of the question. “Jaws” will be 50 years old this summer. In the five decades following Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking masterpiece, most sharksploitation has been chopped up and diluted into chum, tossed into the water by careless, filmmaking fishermen. Most of these films are tired, run-of-the-mill ocean thrillers that recycle the same beats of better movies that have come before. And they expect me to gobble up that bait, like some sort of fool? Now I know how sharks feel as their oceanic ecosystems are corrupted, leaving some to rely on whatever food they can find.
That sounds a bit glib, comparing my love of shark films to the very real and immediate threats of shark endangerment. But if you’ve jumped into these tepid waters anytime over the last decade or so, you know that shark horror is in dire straits. “Jaws” was not the first of its kind; it just perfected the creature feature formula, where audiences are teased and titillated by glimpses of what they fear, before being treated to a gratuitous scare that rewards them for their patience. This has, for some odd reason, fallen by the wayside. (Probably the cost of decent CGI, and because no one is willing to get off their a** and build a massive, practical, frequently malfunctioning animatronic shark, like that’s so hard!) Now, it’s like pulling teeth to get a shark film with more than one decent creature shot — the 300 razor-sharp teeth of a great white, to be exact.
Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw in a scene from “Jaws,” 1975 (Universal Pictures courtesy of Getty Images)
A film will rarely meet all three criteria that I’ve concluded make a good shark film, which makes the discovery of a new contender all the more thrilling. As it turns out, there is hope for shark cinema yet, even in this overfished landscape, and it’s coming from an unexpected place: Cannes.
But fellow shark movie connoisseurs know that it’s not enough to wait for a good film to come along. We must be dogged and relentless, wading through the worst of the worst in search of greatness. In my lifelong quest, I’ve developed a working rubric that any shark film worth its salt(water) must meet, using it to weed out the guppies from the megalodons. A film will rarely meet all three criteria that I’ve concluded make a good shark film, which makes the discovery of a new contender all the more thrilling. As it turns out, there is hope for shark cinema yet, even in this overfished landscape, and it’s coming from an unexpected place: Cannes.
The air of prestige and haughty pretension that surrounds even the mere mention of the Cannes Film Festival might not conjure the words “shark movie” in your mind. But the Director’s Fortnight, an independent sidebar showcase where films outside of the Cannes competition premiere, offers a glimpse at worthy films that might not have the same razzle-dazzle as the festival proper. It was at the Fortnight where Sean Byrne’s “Dangerous Animals” became the first shark film to ever screen during Cannes, and this unconventional locale is quietly befitting of the movie’s atypical premise and exciting execution. And even if the words “shark-loving serial killer” don’t speak to you, “Dangerous Animals” effortlessly checks every box of what a terrific, post-“Jaws” shark movie can and should be.
“Dangerous Animals” hooks all the shark movie tropes that audiences want to see along one extended fishing lure, before twisting that lure into a knot, forcing expectations to collide and shatter. Even if you’re not a sharksploitation expert, the film effectively preys on the average moviegoer’s knowledge of the subgenre to make plenty of room for fresh surprises. Set largely on the tourist boat where amateur instructor Bruce (Jai Courtney) gives unsuspecting travelers the chance to swim with sharks for a deadly price, the film is claustrophobic and innately stressful. Even if Bruce were a good guy, his general business practice would be frightening enough. But when Bruce stabs a young traveler and throws him back into shark-infested waters after a dive, taking the man’s companion captive, it’s clear that we’re in for a wild ride that’s not afraid to take the tension further than most of its contemporaries.
Jai Courtney in “Dangerous Animals” (Courtesy of Mark Taylor/IFC/Shudder)
Given that the bar for shark entertainment is hovering just inches from the ground, one might not think it would be difficult for a sharksploitation film to thrill its audience effectively. After all, how can a movie about a shark — or more sharks, possibly of some mutant or prehistoric variety, depending on the film — terrorizing people not be fun, right? I used to be part of that group, too. There was a time I thought that all I needed to enjoy a shark movie was popcorn, a Diet Coke, a healthy lust for life and a puff from a THC vape before heading into the theater. That is, until I saw “The Meg,” Jon Turteltaub’s 2018 shark thriller that takes Jason Statham’s typical land-locked action to the depths of the deep blue. There was no way a movie about a prehistoric megalodon reaching the surface wasn’t going to be the cinematic event of the summer. Sorry, “Hotel Transylvania 3”!
How wrong I was. After more than an hour of the 113-minute movie, I could feel myself drifting. Where the heck was Mrs. Megalodon, and why did anyone involved with the making of this movie think it was a good idea to spend so much time on a chemistry-deficient love story between two humans (who, last I checked, are not sharks), rather than delivering carnage and shots of blood-stained water? The people are here for the red water, Turteltaub! The experience was an epic disappointment that couldn’t even be turned around when Meg did finally appear, no matter how hungry she was.
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But this massive “Meg” misfortune did have one great outcome: It made me think critically about what was missing from what should’ve otherwise been a slam dunk, and forced me to watch all media, not just sharksploitation, more consciously. I don’t want to credit my career to “The Meg,” but I can, at the very least, say it inspired my shark movie rubric, which I believe to be the simplest yet most effective standard by which any shark film can be judged.
There are three straightforward questions to ask when evaluating a shark movie. The first is, “Do we, the viewer, receive gratuitous shark shots?” This is what we’re here for, after all, and any shark movie that isn’t willing to make proper use of its leading lady is a no-go. But there is also a delicate balance that anyone helming sharksploitation must consider: Show too much shark too early, and you risk losing the audience’s interest; show the shark too late, and the experience is colored by how bored the viewer was up until their first glimpse of a dorsal fin.
“Dangerous Animals” (IFC/Shudder)
The second question on this foolproof rubric is, “Does the shark movie have a necessary degree of camp that both reveres and respects that it is, indeed, a shark movie?” Even if a filmmaker is trying to fall on the serious side, they have to know that any shark movie will be held against the gold standard of “Jaws.” They should play with the tropes Spielberg created, but not actively fight against them; bonus points if the film uses actual, scientific facts about the shark instead of just turning them into a bloodthirsty killing machine, though there is a time and place for that, too. And the final, most important question in the rubric is also its most basic: “Is the shark movie genuinely frightening?” Though most shark encounters happen because curious sharks meet terrified humans, our fear of sharks is still primal, and even the silliest of movies should be able to get one good scare out of these torpedo-shaped vertebrates.
“Something in the Water” dares to ask the bold question no other shark movie has asked: “What if a shark attacked you and you were also a lesbian?” The answer is decidedly less fun than it should be. No lesbian I’ve met would ever make such thoughtless, impractical decisions — ever, but certainly not around sharks.
But if we consider the last decade of shark movies — or at least the ones lucky enough to have a budget that consists of more than $400 and a prayer — meeting this relatively uncomplicated criteria has been a challenge. We were in good shape with 2016’s “The Shallows”; Blake Lively playing a doctor named Nancy who has a passion for surfing when she’s not stitching up patients is great, solid groundwork to build upon. The movie checks all the boxes: Director Jaume Collet-Serra gradually builds to gratuitous shark imagery; the film understands its inanity by acknowledging that a great white swimming in shallow waters is a natural anomaly; and it makes great use of its limited-space conceit to deliver on chilling, memorable shark horror.
And then came “The Meg” and its slightly less dour sequel, “Meg 2: The Trench.” And honey, we were in the trenches, alright! These films are criminally boring, as in, I believe there should be legal ramifications for making movies where Jason Statham wears a wetsuit and hunts giant, brutal, prehistoric predators so exhausting and utterly predictable. Though the sequel dialed up the amount of actual shark content, the rest of the plot is too threadbare to hold the film together between shark shots. The “Meg” movies make the classic mistake of assuming that, just because audiences are into shark horror, they’ll stand for whatever putrid pigswill these films call a narrative. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame’s still on you. I won’t apologize for having an open mind and a curious spirit.
Blake Lively in “The Shallows” (Columbia Pictures)
More recently, we’ve had “Under Paris” and “Something in the Water,” a pair of 2024 shark horror films with a wide chasm of quality between them. “Something in the Water” dares to ask the bold question no other shark movie has asked: “What if a shark attacked you and you were also a lesbian?” The answer is decidedly less fun than it should be. The film drags out its human plotlines and keeps the shark mostly underwater for the entire runtime. And besides that, no lesbian I’ve met would ever make such thoughtless, impractical decisions — ever, but certainly not around sharks. “Under Paris” fares far better, turning the foolishness dial up so far it breaks. Somehow, a shark is loose in the Seine, and it’s about to breed a ton of baby sharks. Oh mon dieu et sacré bleu! This is obviously not good, and forces the French to put down their pastries to find a solution before it’s too late. Spoiler alert: they don’t, and the film boasts one of the most vicious shark bloodbaths I’ve seen yet. It’s killer, it’s campy and it’s crawling with sharks; check, check, check.
“Dangerous Animals” arrives hot on the heels of “Under Paris,” boasting major bite. The film is part psycho kidnapping horror, part shark thriller and part tribute to Madonna’s “Ray of Light.” A young woman named Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) is taken captive by Courtney’s Bruce, whose name is seemingly a tribute to the one Spielberg and co. gave the animatronic shark in “Jaws.” Bruce is a shark devotee, and as such, is a student of their traits and habits. He knows sharks aren’t inherently dangerous to humans, but keeps the ones around his boat steadily fed, ensuring they’ll expect a snack whenever they’re swimming close to a vessel. Bruce drugs his hostages, rigs them to a crane and films them being lowered into the water, capturing their inevitable demise on tape in horrific snuff films.
But Zephyr is as worldly as Bruce is, meaning that she’s a cunning foil to his long-running string of untraceable serial murders. At times, Bryne and screenwriter Nick Lepard turn out such an effective cat-and-mouse game that you’ll forget there’s an even bigger predator waiting just off the starboard side of the boat. “Dangerous Animals” keenly analyzes the weak points in modern sharksploitation, avoiding spots where most films of its ilk stumble. It’s not a perfect movie, and there are a few too many almost-escapes for this connoisseur. But “Dangerous Animals” meets all of the rubric criteria for not just a great shark film, but a fantastic time at the theater during the summer movie season. If “Jaws” could keep a whole generation out of the water, “Dangerous Animals” has the potential to do the same for water-based tourist traps. Maybe going on a sketchy shark swim isn’t as common as simply taking a swim in the ocean. But in this era of shark movies, you have to take the good where you can get it.
“Dangerous Animals” is in theaters and streaming on Shudder June 6.
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