Although three-quarters of the planet’s surface is covered by water, the ocean might as well be another planet for all that we’re equipped to survive down there. If one ascribes to the theory of evolution, we all came from the water eons ago. If one believes that memories can be transmitted genetically, we also carry within us a distant dread of the morbid memories of those giant sharp-toothed predators that stalked and killed us in the dark, murky, salty water.
Although industrialized fishing means that humans kill far more sharks than the inverse every year, whenever a shark attacks a human, it becomes a huge news story that conjures that ancient fear of an underwater conflict where we are at the mercy of killing machines, a bloody battle that we are not equipped to win. Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws set the bar for shark attack movies and inaugurated the era of the “summer blockbuster.” It has never been matched for its cultural impact and ability to induce terror in moviegoers.
This list catalogs scary shark movies in the lineage of Jaws. For more water-based horror, check out our beach horror movies, swimming pool horror movies, and underwater horror movies lists.
The Best Shark Movies
Jaws (1975)
Based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley—which was inspired by a series of real-life shark attacks in New Jersey in 1916—Jaws follows small-town Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), who already fears the water, as he tries to protect his town against a killer great white and a mayor who cares more about tourism dollars than he does about safety. As the shark begins picking off swimmers and growing more emboldened, Brody teams with a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a crusty-but-tough fisherman (Robert Shaw) in a quest to slay the massive beast. Jaws is a cautionary tale about the clash between civilization and the untamed wild and had a tremendous impact on popular culture. It grossed nearly $500 million on a budget of $9 million.
See also: 19 Of The Most Iconic Openings In Horror Movie History
Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977)
Steven (Hugo Stiglitz) is an American-born businessman who visits a small Mexican fishing resort. Miguel (Andres Garcia) is a handsome lifeguard who lives at the village. Together they chase—and share—tourist women as they also hunt for a tiger shark, a breed which is smaller but much more persistent than the great white.
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Working on a $200-million grant from a wealthy investor who seeks to cure Alzheimer’s, an unethical marine biologist in an isolated underwater research facility called Aquatica devises a way to enlarge shark brains. The underwater guinea pigs—a group of super-fast mako sharks—become so intelligent that they figure out how to escape their captivity and begin terrorizing the underwater crew. The team has to work together to outsmart the sharks and rise to the surface without being killed.
See also: The 60 Best 90s Horror Movies
Open Water (2003)
Open Water is based on the true story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who traveled with a scuba-diving group to the Great Barrier Reef in 1998 and wound up stranded when the group’s ship left them behind after taking an inaccurate headcount. Stranded and drifting in the vast, cold sea, the couple, who are renamed Dan and Susan in the screenplay, must fight dehydration, stinging jellyfish, saltwater sickness, and the looming threat of a pack of sharks who have discovered them. Every shark in this movie is real, and the actors ended up spending 120 hours in the water with the sharks.
See also: 77+ Scary Movies Based on True Stories
Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)
Dan (Eric Dane) takes his friends for a weekend cruise on his new yacht. Unfortunately, when the friends jump in the water for a swim, they forget to let down the ladder, leaving all of them trapped in the water. Not only is one of the friend’s baby alone on the ship while they’re treading water indefinitely — they also fear sharks swimming in the depths below.
The Reef (2010)
The Reef is based on the real-life story of Ray Boundy, who survived an incident where his boat was capsized and a tiger shark killed two of his crew mates. In The Reef, five people—including the ship’s captain, Luke—go on a sailing trip when their boat hits a reef and capsizes. The passengers decide to swim toward Turtle Island for safety, while the captain stays on the floating boat because there are sharks in the water. The four swimmers are then stalked by a great white.
Shark Night (2011)
A scary shark movie that feels like a slasher film. Shark Night follows a group of college friends vacationing at a lake house for the weekend. Despite being located on fresh water, the friends begin to be picked off by sharks one by one. Eventually, they discover the attacks aren’t an accident.
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Soul Surfer (2011)
Unlike other movies on this list, Soul Surfer is not a horror movie. It is a biographical drama based on the true story of Bethany Hamilton (AnnaSophia Robb), a young girl from Hawaii who lost her arm to a shark attack while surfing and then courageously made her return to the sport. Along with the support of her parents (Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt) and the leader of a local youth group (Carrie Underwood), Bethany returns to surfing and becomes champion once again.
Swamp Shark (2011)
After a group of shady animal smugglers “lose” a shark in backwoods waters only a week before the popular tourist event “Gator Fest” in the Louisiana bayou, the shark begins terrorizing a community whose residents are accustomed to gators rather than sharks in their waters. With time ticking down and the local economy hinging on the success of Gator Fest, the sheriff blames a local restaurant owner for the death of a resident at the hands of the swamp shark. Was the restaurant owner in cahoots with the animal smugglers, or it is a distraction?
Sand Sharks (2011)
This direct-to-video horror film by Mark Atkins revolves around Jimmy Green (Corin Nemic), who is returning to the quaint but dilapidated island town of White Sands years after a tragic accident in the hopes of reviving the local economy as well as his own personal fortunes. He plans to do so by hosting a massive spring break party in the town. But just when it seems as if everything is going according to plan, an underwater earthquake opens a crack deep in an ocean crater that enables a prehistoric breed of “sand sharks”—who are able to glide as effortlessly over sand particles as they are to swim in the ocean—to attack the town and wreak havoc.
The Multi-Headed Shark Attack Series (2012 – 2017)
This series of films uses a pretty simple premise—add one head to a predatory shark for the first movie. Then add another for its sequel. For the third film, add yet another head—and then another head…. and another.
- 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012) after a Semester at Sea ship is sunk by a mutant two-headed shark, the survivors escape to a deserted atoll, where they find temporary peace. But then a tsunami floods the atoll and puts them face-to-face with the double-headed death machine once more.
- 3-Headed Shark Attack (2015) a pair of marine biologists, along with a small group of researchers, research the Great Pacific garbage patch in an isolated underwater facility. But then a triple-headed great white shark slowly begins eating the facility from one end to the other, forcing the scientists and their crew to desperately plot their escape.
- 5-Headed Shark Attack (2017) off the coast of Puerto Rico, a four-headed monster shark is eating photographers, models, and surfers at a surfing competition. As police and marine biologists plot a way to capture and kill the beast, it suddenly sprouts a fifth head near its tail.
- 6-Headed Shark Attack (2018) a marriage retreat on a remote island gives couples the ultimate team-building activity: surviving a 6-headed killer shark.
Darktide (2012)
Halle Berry stars as Kate, a retired marine biologist and open-sea diver who was known as the “Shark Whisperer.” Kate is haunted by a tragic shark attack from a year earlier that killed a diver who was under her supervision. As her finances run out and the bank seeks to foreclose on her property, Kate’s ex-boyfriend lures her back to the ocean with a lucrative deal. Once she is back out on the open seas, a storm hits, knocking both Kate and the crew into the notoriously shark-infested waters near Cape Town, South Africa.
Bait (2012)
Bait is set in a coastal grocery store in Australia. A former lifeguard named Josh is working there a year after a near-fatal encounter with a great white shark. He is also forced to deal with some burdensome shoppers—his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend, a shifty shoplifter, and a robber who takes everyone hostage—but then a tsunami hits, trapping them all inside the flooded store with 12-foot great white sharks. A sequel to Bait that involved an oceanic plane crash was ultimately scrapped due to the screenplay’s “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Sharknado Series (2013 – 2018)
Sharknado is a series of disaster films from the TV network Syfy. The basic premise involves “sharknados”—tornados that cause giant waterspouts, which lift predatory sharks out of the ocean and into the air and sky, where the disgruntled and dislocated sharks aggressively hunt down and attack humans. According to actress Tara Reid, who appears in the first film, “It is silly, and there’s only a certain amount of barriers you could go into. You can’t take it so seriously when it’s absolutely the sharks flying in the sky. It’s so out there that it’s actually really funny.”
There are six movies in the Sharknado universe:
- Sharknado (2013) a cyclone hits Los Angeles, flooding the city with seawater—and giant sharks.
- Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) a series of sharknados rain giant sharks down on Manhattan.
- Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015) after a sharknado engulfs Washington, DC, a series of sharknados threaten the entire East Coast.
- Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016) following a relatively tranquil five years in the wake the destruction of the East Coast, a rare sand sharknado attacks Las Vegas and threatens to wreak further destruction.
- Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017) after much of North America has been ruined, a gathering storm of sharknados threaten the entire world.
- The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018) after sharknados have destroyed the planet, scientists travel back in time 66 million years to prevent the catastrophe from ever happening in the first place.
Kon Tiki (2013)
Kon Tiki recreates the real-life adventure of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947 wanted to prove that it was possible for people from South America to sail to Polynesia 1,500 years ago rather than the prevailing notion, which was that it was explorers from Western Europe during Columbian times who first discovered Polynesia. Along with his crew, Thor sailed the 4,300 miles from South America to Polynesia on a balsa wood raft. En route, in addition to storms, the crew runs into shark-infested waters.
See also: 10+ Best Nordic Horror Movies
Shark Lake (2015)
Action star Dolph Lundgren stars as Clint Gray, a black-market dealer of exotic species. After a police chase near Lake Tahoe, Clint crashes his van. He is arrested, but in the fracas, no one noticed that a bull shark he’d been carrying in his van escaped and slipped into the lake. Meredith (Sara Lane), a maternal local sheriff, takes Clint’s three-year-old daughter into her care. After Clint’s parole five years later, the bull shark—who was pregnant at the time it escaped Clint’s van into Lake Tahoe—has grown, as has its two children. Working with a marine biologist, Meredith captures the sharks and also helps reunite a remorseful Clint with his daughter.
See also: 21 Hilarious ‘B’ Horror Movies You May Not Have Heard Of
Ice Sharks (2016)
A group of scientists at a floating Antarctic research station called Oasis are forced to do battle with an ancient breed of sharks that have risen to the surface due to global warming. As the polar ice cap melts and their research station is in danger of sinking, the scientists find themselves trapped inside with their supply of food and air dwindling. Their mission is to outwit the ferocious cold-water predators or perish.
The Shallows (2016)
The Shallows sees medical student and surfer Nancy (Blake Lively) mourning her mother’s passing by visiting a remote beach in Baja California that her mother loved. Nancy is attacked by a great white shark while surfing. She manages to make it to a small rock that is a mere 200 yards from shore, but with the tide coming in and no one around to come to save her, Nancy needs to decide if she’s going to die on that rock or take action.
47 Meters Down (2017)
Mandy Moore and Claire Holt star as two vacationing sisters who decide to be adventurous and do a caged shark dive. A snafu on the trip results in the sisters being trapped at the bottom of the ocean. While they are still protected by the cage, they have only an hour of oxygen left. Surrounded by great white sharks and needing to surface slowly in order to prevent deadly decompression sickness, the sisters struggle to survive.
See also: 31+ Best Horror Movies of the 2010s
The Meg (2018)
This underwater action epic centers around Naval Captain Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), who five years previously had to abandon his mission in the Mariana Trench—the deepest part of the ocean on the planet—after an unknown predator forced him to abandon both his ship and half of his crew in the deep. He lost his career and his wife—not only due to the tragedy, but because of his claims that what caused the wreck was a 70-foot megalodon, a giant shark that is thought to have been extinct for a million years. As fate would have it, a submersible containing his ex-wife sinks and is stuck at the bottom of the ocean. Captain Taylor seeks to reclaim his pride—and his wife—by catching the beast that everyone claimed no longer existed.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
A survival horror movie following a group of friends (and frenemies) who go scuba diving to explore the ruins of an underwater Mayan city. An accident causes some of the ruins to collapse, sending silt everywhere and separating the friends in the ensuing chaos. The girls attempt to leave but a shark appears and chases them deeper underwater.
Sharks of the Corn (2021)
Sharks of the Corn is a very bad horror movie featuring rubber sharks running through a corn field à la Children of the Corn. Small town Kentucky locals are perplexed when people start turning up dead looking like victims of a shark attack, though the town is obviously landlocked. This is a great film to watch if you’re a fan of bonkers or bad movies, or if you want something funny to be playing in the background when you have people over (it’s a real conversation starter).
The Reef: Stalked (2022)
An Australian horror movie following four friends on a kayaking adventure. While spearfishing, one of the women notices a shark in the water. She scrambles back to her kayak safely but her friend is killed by the shark. The remaining three friends must paddle back to land while a great white shark stalks them.
The Meg 2: The Trench (2023
A sci-fi action movie that follows the characters of The Meg (2018) five years later. Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is raising his deceased partner’s 14-year-old, Meiying (Sophia Cai) along with her uncle Jiuming Zhang (Wu Jing). All three are aboard a submersible when they discover an illegal underwater mining operation staffed by mercenaries. The group struggles to escape the mercenaries, a traitor in their ranks, the megalodons and other underwater dangers (like a lack of oxygen). This is a fun action movie with a few scary moments and lots of great comedic moments, especially scenes with DJ (Page Kennedy) who learned some valuable lessons from the original Meg film.
No Way Up (2024)
A plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean, leaving a group of survivors trapped underwater with limited oxygen. A group of sharks inhabit the waters around the crash site, making escape even more dangerous. The survivors search the ship’s luggage for diving supplies and argue about the best course of action.
Under Paris (2024)
After a traumatic shark attack took the life of her husband and dive team, marine researcher Sophia (Bérénice Bejo) relocates to Paris and gets a much safer job as an educator at an aquarium. An environmentalist, Mika (Léa Léviant), informs Sophia that the shark responsible for the attack on her team has found its way to Paris and is currently living in the Seine river, the location of an upcoming triathlon. The mayor refuses to believe there is a threat in the Seine, and things get catastrophic (and a bit silly) in this fun shark attack movie.
More Shark Movies
- Tiger Shark (1932) This classic follows a one-handed tuna fisherman whose wife falls for the man he saved from a shark attack.
- Shark! (1969) Predating Jaws by 6 years, Shark! stars Burt Reynolds as a criminal hired to raid sunken treasure. A stuntman died on the set of this movie after being attacked by a great white.
- Jaws 2 (1978) A year after the events of Jaws, Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) finds new trouble in the waters off of Amity Island.
- Night of the Sharks (1988) An Italian action-horror film starring Treat Williams that sees him on the run from gangsters and ultimately ending up as a shark hunter in Mexico. Contrary to the name, most of this film does not take place at night and is more of an action film than a horror movie.
- Red Water (2003) A bull shark stalking a river is the main antagonist in this made-for-TV horror movie.
- Blue Demon (2004) Tells the story of what happens when genetically modified sharks escape a laboratory.
- Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) A giant shark attacks a giant octopus named Aquatic Kaiju.
- Jaws in Japan (2009) Also known as Psycho Shark. Two girls on vacation are offered a place to stay in a man’s cottage, and then a shark attacks. The film has nothing to do with the Jaws franchise.
- Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012) This horror-comedy was built around the popularity and success of the MTV reality series.
- Ghost Shark (2013) The spirit of a great white shark is intent on revenge against a small town.
- Avalanche Sharks (2014) Snowbound sharks arrive at a ski resort to ruin the bikini contest.
- Planet of the Sharks (2016) In a future where most of the ice has melted and raised the oceans, giant sharks dominate the planet.
- Great White (2021) Five people are stranded by a seaplane in shark infested waters.
- Shark Bait (2022) Friends end up stranded in the ocean after a jet ski collision.
- The Requin (2022) A critically panned movie starring Alicia Silverstone as one half of a couple struggling to survive a nightmare vacation surrounded by sharks.
- The Black Demon (2023) An action thriller about a family who encounters a megalodon shark while on vacation.
- Blind Waters (2023) A Tubi original about a vacationing couple whose boat capsizes in shark infested waters.
- Cocaine Shark (2023) a low-budget animal attack movie which was tweaked and repackaged to take advantage of the Cocaine Bear hype.
Further reading:
- The Best Beach Horror Movies: Sand, Surf, and Scares
- 19+ Underwater Movies: The Art of Aquatic Horror
- 8+ Swimming Pool Horror Films
