The Best Shark Movies Of All Time

Image via Complex Original

Director: Jack Perez (as Ace Hannah)

Starring: Deborah Gibson, Lorenzo Lamas, Mark Hengst, Sean Lawlor 

How believable is the shark? Not at all. It jumps out out of the ocean and eats an airplane, then takes a bite of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Any distinguishing characteristics? A strange diet and super-size.

Who’s on the menu? Basically everything and anyone that comes in his path.

This is a bad movie. The plot barely goes beyond what’s contained in the title. But I will say that it contains perhaps the most deliciously dumb scene in monster movie history. Whereas other films dance around the massive monsters’ existence, only coyly revealing its power, Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus gets right to the point. In the shark’s grand entrance, we see an airplane soaring through a turbulent sky, when it gets struck by lightning. Startled, a man on the plane seems to blame the flight attendant for the inclimate weather, justifying his short-temper by letting her know he’s getting married in two days—a stilted piece of character development dialogue. His next line is “Holy shit!” And that is because he sees Mega-Shark, soaring roughly 30,000 feet in the air to snatch a wing and drag the plane into the ocean. Here’s the other good thing about the movie: it stars former dream boat Lorenzo Lamas, who is now known as Lorenzo Lamas-Craig because his fourth and sixth wife are named Shauna and Shawna. Shauna kept Lamas as her surname and Shawna didn’t want to share phonetics with Shauna, so here we are. Neat right? 

Director: Anthony C. Ferrante 

Stars: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid

How believable is the shark(s)? Not at all. They get caught in a cyclone. That’s not something that happens to sharks. 

Any distinguishing characteristics? They’re airborne. 

Who’s on the menu? Most of Los Angeles

Syfy-originals are known for forsaking reality for absurdity. And so, the scientific errors begin with this movie’s title. Tornados originate on land. And in this, the shark-stuffed wind storm that sweeps through Los Angeles starts in the Pacific Ocean—making it a cyclone. Another thing, sharks deserve more respect than Sharknado gives them. These prehistoric killers have endured millions of years because they’re the peak ocean predators. This storm meant to make them more terrifying actually makes them less deadly because now they’re out of their natural habitat. And so D-listers can take turns chopping up these computer-generated killers on land—exemplified by the finale when the movie’s hero, Fin (what else?), bifurcates a dive-bombing shark with a chainsaw, a move Fin would not have been able to do in the shark’s natural habitat. Okay. Sorry. I’m done. It’s just the shark deserves more respect than Sharknado gives it. And thankfully, the following films on this list respect their power far more. 

Director: Kimble Rendall

Starring: Phoebe Tonkin, Xavier Samuel, Julian McMahon, Sharni Vinson

How believable are the sharks? They get sent by a tsunami into a supermarket, which isn’t the most ridiculous plot point in history. And otherwise, they act more or less like sharks. 

Any distinguishing characteristics? They’re in a grocery store.

Who’s on the menu? Shoppers and shoplifters.

Sharks and 3-D seem like a natural pairing. Sharks are scary and 3-D (ostensibly) makes films more engrossing, which stands to reason that this would make the sharks even more scary. But, like all novelty-centric creations, the effect gets used to cover up the fundamental flaws of the base product. Bait 3D gets the nod over Shark Night 3-D because of the inventiveness of its set-up. The film starts with a hungover lifeguard going to a supermarket where a stock boy gets fired because his girlfriend shoplifted, and she in turn is arrested by her policeman father. Then there’s a gunpoint robbery. And in the middle of this fracas, a tsunami floods the supermarket and an adjacent parking garage, washing in two humongous great white sharks. The characters are fresh-faced, but mostly vapid, so no emotions really get elicited at their deaths, other than a few moments of mild shock at some well-timed strikes. The 3-D effects were immediately dated and don’t make up for a the disappointing execution of an intriguing situation.

Director: Mario Van Peebles

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane

How believable are the sharks? The movie is poorly constructed, but the events actually happened, so somewhere in the middle.

Any distinguishing characteristics? They’re just normal sharks participating in the most horrific at-sea incident in history. 

Who’s on the menu? The crew members who survive the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.

The story of the USS Indianapolis ranks among the most mind-bendingly horrifying experiences in human history. While en route to deliver components of an atomic bomb that would vaporize hundreds of thousands of people, the ship was sunk by a Japanese submarine, leaving hundreds of men stranded in the middle of the ocean for four days. And over those four days, sharks discovered their location. To work, this grisly episode would have needed a delicate touch. And this movie doesn’t have it. Cage, as he always does, gives a valiant effort, but with lines like “there will always be war until we kill ourselves off as a species” delivered straight through the fourth wall, there’s only so much he can do. The effects are about as realistic as early-2000s Call of Duty. And by the time the sharks get to chomping, the inevitability of death and the moral stickiness of their cause has sucked out most of the tension. But at the end, after the war, Cage and the Japanese commander of the submarine have a face-to-face and discuss the difference between following their orders and being good men—finding themselves both lacking, but forgiving each other, then snapping into a tearful salute. In relation to what humans did in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, sharks seem harmless.

Director: Andrew Goods

Starring: Damian Walshe-Howling, Zoe Naylor, Gyton Grantley, Adrienne Pickering

How believable is the shark? It’s a great white with an overactive appetite—the industry standard that’s rendered rather well in this movie thanks to loads of live footage.

Any distinguishing characteristics? It’s a big un’.

Who’s on the menu? Four friends stranded after their boat sinks.

Luke has an awesome job. He drives the recently purchased yachts of rich folks to them. So on one of his trips, he basically orchestrates a double-date with his buddy. Things go swimmingly (lol) as they treat themselves to some snorkeling and sunbathing. But then, their ship’s underside gets sliced by a rock, prompting a slow slide underwater. As those onboard waffle between staying aboard or making a break for a distant island, a beefy and persistent great white shark shows up with an appetite. Their situation percolates until the inevitable starts to occur and bodies begin disappearing under water that slowly gains a reddish hue. The film forsakes special effects and cuts in some truly terrifying shots of a circling, then charging great white, but the scream-queen acting smudges the sheen of realism as does the relatively underwhelming build-up and conclusion. A worthy effort without any real triumphs or errors.

Director: Rob Letterman, Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson

Starring: Will Smith, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro

How believable is the shark? If a shark were capable of language and abstract thought, I could very easily see it coming to Lenny’s conclusions.

Any distinguishing characteristics? He’s a vegetarian, animal lover.

Who’s on the menu? Nobody, but Lenny pretends to be a shark to boost the cred of his friend, Oscar, which is a very nice thing to do.

Shark Tale came when animated features shifted from employing silly, yet mostly unknown voice actors to starring A-listers—with this one even making the fishy characters bear the defining features of its stars (e.g. Smith’s megawatt smile and Jolie’s pouters). In this, Smith plays Oscar, a cleaner fish with aspirations of grandeur who happens to be in the right place at the right time when a vicious shark gets crushed by a dropped anchor—leading the grateful citizens to anoint him as Sharkslayer. The unlucky shark had been trying to toughen up his vegetarian brother Lenny (Black), who then goes into hiding because he fears what his father (De Niro channeling Brando) will think of his cowardice (Shea Serrano tweeted that Lenny is the fully realized version of Bruce from Finding Nemo, which is exactly correct). Oscar handles his new reputation douche-ily, ditching his long-pining friend (Zellweger) for a large-lipped angelfish (Jolie), that’s only into him for his fame. Things come to a head when Oscar and Lenny let their facades slip and they must deal with the consequences of everybody knowing who they actually are. With a ton of winks to The Godfather and Jaws, this film feels more suited to movie buff parents than their children, who still benefit from the heartwarming (if hokey) be-yourself moral. Regardless, it’s a truly stacked cast mugging their way through a film that features their fishy doppelgangers and multiple playings of “Carwash”—so it’s pretty likable. 

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring: Blake Lively

How believable is the shark? It’s a great white with an overactive appetite. And the industry standard works well here because of Collet-Serra’s detail-oriented direction. 

Any distinguishing characteristics? A blood lust for Blake Lively despite ample other food options.

Who’s on the menu? Blake Lively

Blake Lively is very pretty, but to be frank, she’s not very good at acting. But there’s some movies that don’t require a tour-de-force performance. Some movies just require somebody that’s nice enough to look at for 87 minutes while they deal with trials and tribulations. The Shallows is that type of movie. And the trials and tribulations come in the form of a ravenous great white shark that is absolutely intent upon eating Blake Lively. To begin, Lively takes a vacation to get over her recently passed mother, On this vacation, she decides to go surfing, alone. While riding a barrell, the shark body-checks her, then takes a bite before she climbs aboard a deceased whale (also probably killed by the shark) before making mad dashes to a coral-surrounded island, then a rusty buoy. Despite having a week’s worth of whale, the shark chows down on three others, yet is still hungry for some blonde American. Director Jaume Collet-Serra lets Lively do her best Liam Neeson in a bikini—sewing up her wound with jewelry, shooting a flare at an oil slick and using the buoy’s anchor in a novel deadly way. In between some hamfisted backstory scenes, The Shallows works because it forsakes overdone gore for the visceral tension of being 200 yards from safety with a shark in between. 

Director: Renny Harlin

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Saffron Burrows, LL Cool J, Thomas Jane, Michael Rappaport 

How believable are the sharks? Not at all. But nothing about this film is meant to be taken seriously and that’s what makes it so great. It’s the exception to the rule. 

Any distinguishing characteristics? Twice as large as normal and five times as smart.

Who’s on the menu? Samuel L. Jackson and a handful of other delightful character actors.

In a high-tech lab out in a middle of the ocean, a scientist (Burrows) genetically modifies sharks in an attempt to cure alzheimer's. This doubles the sharks’ body size and quintuples their brainpower, which makes them realize they don’t particularly care for being penned up. Also at the base, a suit bankrolling the operation (Jackson), a parrot-owning chef (Cool J) and the shark tamer (Jane). If you’ve seen any of the Jurassic Park movies, you know what happens when humans fiddle with the DNA of superpredators. And Deep Blue Sea is very much a movie about sharks eating people. You know it’s going to happen. But you don’t know when. And the deep joy of this film comes with the tight action sequences that flow one from the next with no fat in between—just a few delightfully cheesy lines. . The talented actors take everything seriously enough for the audience to get sucked into the peak B-movie action action. There’s some gaping logical holes and no discernible moral other than “don’t genetically engineer sharks,” but there’s something irresistibly entertaining about watching people try and mostly fail to avoid getting eaten. Plus, midway through a motivational speech, Samuel L. Jackson gets chomped in one of the most surprising murders this side of Psycho, and the credits roll to “Deepest Blue,” LL Cool J’s shark-themed masterpiece.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw

How believable is the shark? Considering this is a 40 year old film, the effects surpass most modern films. And I buy its behavior within the movie’s logic. 

Any distinguishing features? Being the centerpiece of one of the most iconic films ever. Also, it’s tremendous size.

Who’s on the menu? Beachgoing visitors to Amity.

In this classic, Amity, an East coast beach town, gears up for the profitable summer season when a nighttime skinny dipper gets mostly swallowed by a 25-foot, man-eating shark that’s claimed the coast as its feeding ground. But when police chief Brody (Scheider) recommends shutting down the beach, the town leaders flip out, thinking about all the lost revenue. A couple days later, a little boy gets consumed on a sunny afternoon. So, together with an ocean researcher (Dreyfuss) and a grizzled survivor of the USS Independence (Shaw), Brody goes to try to hunt the massive tourist-repeller with some harpoons, a couple guns and a few tanks of pressurized air—and somehow they win. Jaws is considered the first summer blockbuster, holding the title of highest grossing film for a spell. But it’s a movie about a shark that’s not really about a shark. The shark’s just a stand-in for the murky dangers that come with any business that ignores looming disasters because of the short-term profits, where it be the fossil fuel industry and global warming or financial risk-takers and the economy’s collapse. And while this metaphorical component makes Jaws a classic, the circumstances necessary to make its larger point dial back some of the terror. After all, nobody needed to get in the water. And Amity would have eventually recovered. And besides, the 40-year-old special effects, while ground-breaking and awe-inducing, can’t quite replicate the fear induced by sticking solely with live footage, which is why another film takes the top spot. 

Director: Chris Kentis

Starring: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis 

How believable are the sharks? Perfectly. They used tons of live footage and recreated shark behavior, which is terrifying.

Any distinguishing characteristics? Their numbers and agonizing patience coupled with the fact they’re not great whites. 

Who’s on the menu? A deep-sea diving rich couple. 

A high-power couple goes deep sea diving during a much-needed vacation to the Caribbean. Thanks to a hairy chested douche, their guide makes a counting error and leaves them in the middle of the ocean, miles from shore. Though sharks factor in heavily, Open Water focuses more on the unrivaled terror of slowly realizing that you’ve been abandoned somewhere where sustained survival is impossible. Made on only a $500,000 budget by an avid scuba diving couple, the extended build-up gets punctuated by a terrifying wake-up from a nap, a fight over who deserves the blame for their predicament and a couple experimental chomps from a pack of Caribbean reef sharks that intimidate with their numbers rather than size. The knock on the film is that the couple isn’t very likable, but when getting torn limb from limb in a feeding frenzy is the fate that awaits, I don’t think anyone would be at their most personable.

Open Water is the greatest shark film because its just-above-camcorder quality replicates the real thing. Sharks don’t need special effects. They’re sharks. And this situation is the most terrifying because the other contenders swallow their victims in a matter of seconds. Reef sharks nip at you for hours as you shiver, helplessly trapped in the middle of water, out of sight and earshot, growing dehydrated and sunburnt while chumming the water with your own blood. And then, when they finally decide to make their move, it isn’t over in a gulp.