10 Greatest Shark Movies of the Last 50 Years, Ranked

If you’re ranking a bunch of movies from worst to best, or good to greatest, it’s usually poor form to say what the number 1 film is before getting to it, but on occasion, it feels stupid to draw out the suspense. When it comes to shark movies, like, of course it’s Jaws. Spoilers. Jaws is the best. Who would’ve known, right? Crazy!

But Jaws is the one absolutely perfect horror/thriller movie about hunting sharks, and it still holds up 50 years on from its release. To celebrate some of the other (admittedly lesser) shark films released in its wake, here are a selection of others, capped off with Jaws, because duh. Some of these are not great, but it’s the kind of thing where pickings are slim, and so if you have to grit your (hopefully not pointy) teeth and just power through a bunch of them, then so be it.

10

‘The Meg’ (2018)

Directed by Jon Turteltaub

There’s a high-concept to The Meg; you have to give it that. It might not be as highly entertaining as you might want it to be, but the dumbness of it all sure is… something? Maybe? Eh, whatever. It’s the movie about a megalodon wreaking havoc, even though the species has been extinct for millions of years, and Jason Statham plays one of the only people who might be able to stop it.

Statham fighting a prehistoric 75-foot-long shark should be so much more fun than this. The Meg comes close to having some entertainment value in fits and bursts, but much of it is also quite tedious, disappointing, and – excuse the pun – toothless. Having to include this movie in a top 10 really speaks to just how few great shark movies there are out there. The scary thing is, though, there are also worse ones than this.

9

’47 Meters Down’ (2017)

Directed by Johannes Roberts

Things get a little better with 47 Meters Down, which could well be called an underrated shark movie… just. Like most movies that deal with combating or surviving sharks, it has a pretty simple premise, centering on a pair of sisters on vacation who find themselves stuck in a cage underwater. Running out of oxygen is bad enough, but there are also great white sharks circling nearby; real bad to worse kind of thing.

Like most movies that deal with combating or surviving sharks, it has a pretty simple premise, centering on a pair of sisters on vacation who find themselves stuck in a cage underwater.

It’s pure pulp, and also the kind of film that you can watch and know more or less where it’s going from start to finish, but it commits to its premise and mines some tension/fun out of it. Also, 47 Meters Down is a little better overall than its sequel, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, which gets maybe a tad too silly for its own good.

8

‘Bait’ (2012)

Directed by Kimble Rendall

As something like The Mist shows, supermarkets make for surprisingly decent horror story settings. Bait is indeed largely set in one, but has a certain novelty factor on account of it being about people confined to a supermarket that has become home to a great white shark, all because of a freak tsunami that got said shark out of its, you know, usual habitat.

Of course, Bait is very silly, and you do have to be ready for some serious (well, unserious) schlock if you want to find much entertainment here. But as a B-movie kind of thing, knowingly embracing a ridiculous premise, it has something to offer. Bait was never going to win awards, or even be that memorable in the overall scheme of things, but if you want some dumb fun, it is possible to get some of that here.

7

‘The Reef’ (2010)

Directed by Andrew Traucki

Turning toward something that feels a little more serious now, The Reef isn’t quite as goofy as some of the already-mentioned movies, even if the execution here isn’t perfect. Still, it’s decent enough, and there is some suspense to be found in this relatively succinct (only 88 minutes) film about a capsized boat putting its crew in danger of being hunted by – you guessed it – another great white shark.

It comes pretty close to stripping shark-related horror down to its bare essentials, as there are a small number of characters here, and they’re all wrapped up in what amounts to a very simple story. But The Reef works as something non-flashy and right to the point. It does what it needs to, doesn’t overstep in any regard, and doesn’t outstay its welcome, either. It’s not bad.

6

‘Jaws 2’ (1978)

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc

To the surprise of hopefully no one, Jaws 2 is not as good as the original Jaws, but it’s probably also not quite as bad as you might fear it to be. It certainly fares better than the other sequels to Jaws, and it does ultimately connect a little more to the first movie, thanks to Roy Scheider returning as Police Chief Brody.

He’s not bad, but Jaws 2 does otherwise go through the motions more than a little, simply being about the same town from the first movie having to deal with a second shark terrorizing it. It’s not particularly adventurous at all, as a sequel, but if you do just want more Jaws, and more Brody, and you don’t want to just rewatch Jaws for the 500th time (it’ll still slap, even after 499 viewings), well… here’s Jaws 2, then.

5

‘Deep Blue Sea’ (1999)

Directed by Renny Harlin

Deep Blue Sea is deeply silly, but it’s also pretty fun, and a genuinely good B-grade flick. It takes place in an undersea lab, and involves sharks being used by scientists who are trying to develop a cure for Alzheimer’s. But, inevitably, the sharks break loose, and then the people in the lab have gotta fight for their lives and all that good stuff.

If you make a shark movie, you can either go for realism, or you can just go wild and make something ridiculous. Deep Blue Sea is the right kind of ridiculous, pushing things far enough to be entertaining, but not so far off the deep (ha-ha) end that you’ve got like a Sharknado sort of thing or something. Deep Blue Sea won’t change your life or anything, but it is a good time, when approached with the right mindset.

4

‘The Shallows’ (2016)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Switching back to something a little more grounded, The Shallows is a survival movie that centers on a surfer having to try and fend for her life on her own, after she gets stranded at sea. She’s not that far from shore, but there are a whole heap of sharks between her and dry land, which is where the whole survival thing comes into play.

Blake Lively has to carry a good deal of the film, as the only real main character for long stretches of The Shallows, and she’s pretty solid throughout. The Shallows does keep things simple, and so if you’ve seen a bunch of shark movies before, there might not be too many surprises to be found, but at least it’s all pretty well-executed and generally engaging.

3

‘Dangerous Animals’ (2025)

Directed by Sean Byrne

The most recent shark film worth highlighting as one of the (somewhat) good ones, Dangerous Animals is pretty heightened and solidly pulpy. It doubles as both a shark movie and a serial killer film, given the serial killer who serves as the main antagonist here is also rather passionate about sharks, to put it mildly.

He abducts a surfer, and she’s held captive on his boat, trying to escape before he can feed her to a bunch of sharks as part of some twisted master plan – or ritual – he has. So, sure, Dangerous Animals is another ridiculous shark movie, but it’s worth it for Jai Courtney’s very committed performance. It seems pretty aware of what it is, for the most part, and has fun with the whole serial killer + sharks thing that’s central to its heightened premise.

2

‘Open Water’ (2003)

Directed by Chris Kentis

As the title implies, Open Water is the kind of thing you might want to stay away from if you have a fear of water. This one’s very lean, clocking in at under 80 minutes in length, and mostly focusing on two people trying to survive while stuck out at sea. They have nowhere to go for safety and, inevitably, they soon realize they’re unnervingly close to a bunch of sharks.

Open Water was executed on an impressively low budget, so if you want shark-related spectacle or action, you’re not going to get a ton of that here. Instead, it’s more of a minimalist horror/thriller film that strives to be realistic, and doesn’t do a bad job at all in making you feel the intensity and desperation of the fight for survival here. It’s simple, striking, and overall quite good.

1

‘Jaws’ (1975)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

As stated earlier, yeah, Jaws is the best shark movie of the last 50 years, and, come 2026, it’ll be more than 50 years old, and you won’t be able to say that anymore. But when it’s no longer something that came out half a century ago, you can rest assured that Jaws will also remain the best shark film of the last 100 years, too. Hell, the best of all time, now and probably forever.

It’s hard to imagine a story about hunting down a particularly terrifying shark being told more efficiently or with a greater level of suspense than it was in Jaws. This was the first pretty-much-perfect movie Steven Spielberg directed, and it still stands as one of his finest efforts. It was a groundbreaking blockbuster, a brilliant thriller, and just all-around great entertainment. Whenever you watch it, there’s every chance it will remain next to impossible to fault.

NEXT: The Greatest Action Movies of the Last 50 Years, Ranked