Sharks! From ‘Jaws’ to ’47 Meters Down,’ 9 Movies Guaranteed to Keep You Out of the Water This Summer

There are a lot of people out there who spend their winters pining away for summer, along with it the opportunity to soak up the sun and hit the beach. So why does Hollywood have a history of scaring the crap out of us with a specific kind of horror movie so that the last thing we want to do is enter the ocean and run the risk of going up against predators with big, sharp, nasty teeth?

It began 42 years ago when Steven Spielberg decided to make Jaws his second film. The success was immediate, with beach attendance around the country dropping dramatically. At the same time, it ushered in the age of the Hollywood blockbuster as the film quickly swam to the top of the all-time box office chart, and remains the one by which all other shark-related films are measured.

While few have been able to match the power of Jaws, there have been quite a number that have tried. Most are small, personal tales of survival of a few people attempting to elude shark death (Blake Lively’s The Shallows and Mandy Moore’s 47 Meters Down are good examples), some just throw logic out the window (the Sharknado films), and then there are big budget efforts like 1999’s Deep Blue Sea and last year’s The Meg, which goes all prehistoric in its approach.