Yahoo Movies The best shark movies to watch after you've seen Netflix's Under Paris
On the big screen, the ocean is a terrifying place. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, here are some terrifying shark movies.
The Sharknado franchise has had an unfortunate stranglehold on the world of shark movies since it first showed up in 2013. It's as if we forgot for a while that sharks could be genuinely scary on the big screen. Thankfully, Netflix is winning rave reviews in 2024 for its buzzy shark horror tale Under Paris, which shows why "catacomb" is the scariest word in any language.
But if you're willing to move a little off the beaten track, there are gems to be found throughout the recent history of the shark movie genre. We'll assume for the sake of argument that, if you're reading this, you're already familiar with both Jaws and The Meg.
Other than that, here are the shark movies you should be using to ensure that any summer holiday to a beachy locale becomes unduly terrifying. Nearly 50 years after Spielberg made us all afraid of the water, plenty of filmmakers are following in his wake.
47 Meters Down | 2017
47 Meters Down is the Gravity of shark movies. Just like Alfonso Cuarón's chilling spin on being lost in the infinite void of space, 47 Meters Down shows just how claustrophobic you can feel even when you're in the most wide open of spaces.
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In this case, two women find themselves trapped at the bottom of the ocean. They're in a shark cage, but they're not stuck in it. It's just that whenever they leave, they could fall victim to the CGI predators patrolling the waters around them. The visual effects might be ropey, but director Johannes Roberts gets every possible ounce of tension out of the scenario.
It's actually a deeply emotional story between the two women, with the sharks as more of a plot mechanism than a central conceit. In the pantheon of recent shark movies, it's one of the best.
47 Meters Down is available to buy or rent on VOD.
The Shallows | 2016
Jaume Collet-Serra has somewhat climbed the budget ladder these days, making massive Dwayne Johnson blockbusters rather than small-scale action B-movies. But back in the mid-2010s, Collet-Serra did a lot of work with Liam Neeson in his action hero pomp and also cast Blake Lively as a swimmer attempting to fight off a truly enormous shark in The Shallows.
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This is a no-frills thriller in which Lively's 100% committed performance — she said she was inspired by her husband Ryan Reynolds in Buried — takes centre stage. There's a ludicrously gymnastic shark in this one, but there's also a Macgyver-like human hero and a bird companion called Steven Seagull. What more can anyone want?
47 Meters Down is available to buy or rent on VOD.
Shark Night | 2011
If the shark in The Shallows is too acrobatic for you, then it's probably best to avoid Shark Night entirely. When it was unveiled in 2011, the movie was a clear example of the post-Avatar boom in 3D entertainment, with enormous oceanic predators jumping right down the lens of the camera at frequent intervals. And when we say jumping, we mean leaping like a scared salmon.
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But there's something fun about the shonky B-movie vibe of it all, with a group of partying teens getting menaced on an ill-fated lake house vacation. Shark movies are fundamentally very silly and they don't come much sillier than this one.
Shark Night is currently only available on DVD and Blu-ray.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged | 2019
Is it a bit of a cheat to have two movies from the same franchise on here? Yes. But the joy of 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is in just how different it is to its predecessor. While that one essentially locked its characters in place and used the sharks as accessories to a more character-based story, this one is unashamedly a pure shark movie.
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The canvas is broader and the critters more unique, with Uncaged pitting characters against a blind shark that has lived its life in the buried remains of a labyrinthine Mayan city. It owes as much to the spelunking terrors of The Descent as it does to the previous film in its own franchise, and that's a really hefty movie to use as a comparison. Uncaged, for the most part, earns its place in that sentence.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged is streaming on BBC iPlayer.
Shark Tale | 2004
You probably haven't thought about Shark Tale for 20 years and, look, that's understandable. On the face of it, it's a 20-year-old DreamWorks bit of slop with some quite ugly computer animation. However, for those who grew up with this as a classic children's movie on hard rotation, its array of catchphrases and colourful characters can't help but work.
Rewatched as an adult, it's also truly remarkable how much fun the film has with its use of the shark family as an analogue to the Mafia. Robert De Niro gives great gusto to the Godfather figure at the head of the table, while there's a "sleeping with the fishes" joke for the ages. And that's before you get to the presence of the actual Martin Scorsese as the voice of a pufferfish.
So bear with us on this one and revisit Shark Tale. It's not the most terrifying movie on this list, but it's certainly one of the most fun.
Shark Tale is available to buy or rent on VOD.
