Nearly 50 years ago, Steven Spielberg changed cinema forever when he made a little shark movie called Jaws. The first movie to make $100 million at the box office, Jaws’ popularity created the term “blockbuster” to describe the audiences lining up for blocks outside theaters. A new Hollywood business model soon followed in Jaws’ bloody wake: come up with a high-concept idea with broad appeal, release it in summer when families are looking for entertainment and crank out sequels as needed. (Even Jaws the Revenge made $50 million in 1987 dollars.)
Jaws also inadvertently created a subgenre of action/horror movies based on sharks. Occasionally, a big-budget shark movie, such as The Meg or Deep Blue Sea, surfaces but most of these creature features are straight-to-DVD/streaming. Here’s a look at shark movies already out or coming in 2022, if you’re still too scared to go in the water.
Cover Photo: Universal Pictures
Move Over Jaws The Best Shark Movies Taking a Bite Out of the Big Screen This Summer
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'Blood in the Water'
Billed as “Saws meet Jaws,” Blood in the Water finds a novel use of sharks with a sadist using a great white to terrorize his victims in this September release. Well, the victims aren’t completely innocent. All five of them got away with crimes, and their captor forces them into a deadly game of Russian roulette in the water. Director Dominic Nutter’s other credit is Jurassic Island, which sounds suspiciously similar to another Spielberg movie.
Photo: 4Digital Media
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'Bull Shark'
Bull Shark is presumably about a bull shark terrorizing people in a lake in Texas. Wait, a lake? We’ll have to watch to see how they explain that. Available for free on Tubi, Bull Shark has a 2.6 rating on IMDB. One commenter said, “Basically it's Jaws on a Great Lake. Despite some decent imagery, along with a bad CGI shark, the poor acting really makes the movie hard to stop watching.” The Great Lakes are nowhere near Texas, but the point is taken.
Photo: B22 Films
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'Deep Fear'
Still in production, Deep Fear is another female-fronted fright fest. House of Gucci’s Madalina Ghenea plays Naomi, who's on a solo yacht trip through the Caribbean to meet her boyfriend, played by Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick. She encounters some shipwrecked drug traffickers who force her to retrieve their sunken stash. A few tiger sharks get in the way.
Photo: Brilliant Pictures
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'Sharkula'
Yep, the title says it all: Shark + Dracula. Somehow the Count has been banished to the sea and passes his undead curse onto a great white shark. It doesn’t appear to be associated with the SyFy channel, but it should be. Sharkula is clearly following in SyFy’s Sharknado model. Mix a shark with any other noun and voila! You’ve got a shark movie.
Photo: Wild Eye Releasing
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'The Reef: Stalked'
This one is a sequel to an actually decent 2010 movie. The original Reef, purportedly based on a true story, followed five people in Australia whose boat capsizes near the Great Barrier Reef. As they swim to safety, they soon realize they’re sharing the water with sharks, including a pesky great white. Coming July 29, The Reef: Stalked follows three women on a Pacific Island kayaking adventure rudely interrupted by—you guessed it—a great white.
Photo: Jaque Fisher/Cornerstone Pictures
