Shark Movies: What does an analysis of 10 “Best of” lists reveal?

Is there a definitive list of the best shark movies ever made? No. That would be too hard since they’re usually created based on personal preference.

But that’s part of the appeal (and fun) of lists, right? We want to see if any of our faves made someone else’s list —and if any of our faves were snubbed.

I’m sure FOMO factors in somewhat too. Was there anything we missed and didn’t know about?

This post at first started as a “best shark horror movies” list because sharks have been on my brain lately. In addition to the release of The Black Demon in April, another shark movie hits theaters on August 4, Meg 2. Crackle’s July 2023 offerings include a ton of shark movies, which is why one of their sections is titled Shark Fest! Then there’s Sharksploitation, which premieres on Shudder on July 21, and one I’m personally super curious about.

But the word “best” tripped me up when trying to compile my own “best of” list. Trying to determine how I would define it plunged me into a toothy little rabbit hole.

I was prepared to base my list on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb rankings. That’s how I discovered their “best shark movie” lists. I also wondered which ones they had in common. Would their lists be identical? And how did theirs compare to other “best shark movies” lists? Were they all cookie-cutter versions of each other?

To answer my own question, I created a Google Sheets of all the movies mentioned on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb’s along with eight other lists I’d discovered. Here are some insights I made after sinking my teeth into this salty project.

The Lists

These are the lists of “best shark movies” I used for my research.

1. Rotten Tomatoes (RT)
2. IGN
3. Cosmopolitan (Cosmo)
4. Vulture
5. Game Rant
6. Entertainment Weekly (EW)
7. Men’s Health
8. Esquire
9. The Manual
10.  IMDb

Rotten Tomatoes listed the most movies, with a total of 39. That included both best and worst selections, though. They had 14 “best” picks, four of which were documentaries.

RT’s list was also the most up-to-date and was the only one to include this year’s shark movie, The Black Demon. (But it wasn’t among their “best” picks.) The other lists were from 2022 or January 2023.

13 Observations about Shark Movie Lists

1. Jaws was the one movie that made all lists.

Well, technically, Vulture’s list was “best shark movies since Jaws” and didn’t include it on their list. However, in a way, Jaws still topped Vulture’s list since it set the benchmark for the other movies picked.

2. 6 shark movies were on nine of the ten lists.

They were:

1. Jaws 2
2. Deep Blue Sea
3. Open Water
4. The Shallows
5. 47 Meters Down
6. The Meg

The Reef was on eight of them.

3. 6 lists included shark documentaries in addition to horror movies.

They were:

1. Sharkwater (Rotten Tomatoes, Cosmo, Game Rant, Esquire)
2. Blue Water, White Death (Cosmo, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire)
3. Playing with Sharks (Rotten Tomatoes, The Manual)
4. Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth (The Manual)
5. Sharkwater Extinction (Rotten Tomatoes)
6. Sharks 3D (Rotten Tomatoes)

4. Sharkwater was the one documentary to make four out of the six lists that included documentaries.

Filmmaker Rob Stewart’s lifelong fascination with sharks and his thrill-seeking nature led him to “the most shark-rich waters of the world.” His adventure turned into appreciation and respect in the form of a documentary where he “debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas.”

Blue Water, White Death was the other shark doc to make at least three lists, including Cosmo’s, Entertainment Weekly’s, and Esquire’s.

5. Two animated kids’ movies with or about sharks made a few of the lists.

Shark Tale found its way onto three lists, including Rotten Tomatoes, The Manual, and Esquire.

Finding Nemo also made its way onto three lists: The Manual, Entertainment Weekly, and Men’s Health. They all admitted that Nemo doesn’t technically belong on a shark movie list, but there is one in it that plays a fairly big part, and, as EW pointed out, he’s pretty scary to five-year-olds. But Men’s Health had the most entertaining justification for their pick:

This is actually a movie about shark redemption, a commitment to a new diet, and making friends. And while yes, those sharks did try to eat the other cute little fish, it shows that we all fall down, but we can still get up.

6. Tintorera: Killer Shark influenced one of Vulture’s non-shark movie picks.

Vulture included Tintorera: Killer Shark among its “best of” picks, and rightly so. The 1977 horror movie is about a tiger shark terrorizing Mexico’s east coast.

But Vulture also included another movie that wasn’t about sharks at all, a 1979 Italian film called Zombie.

Nope. Nothing’s lost in translation. They put a zombie movie on a shark list…that isn’t about zombie sharks. Why?

Well, as Vulture explained, it wasn’t director Lucio Fulci’s idea. But one of his producers was nuts about Tintorera and wanted a shark in the movie. So he made it happen. Vulture even shared a clip of the crazy shark vs. zombie scene.

7. Entertainment Weekly also shared an interesting Tintorera tidbit.

The “Italian Jaws knock-off” ranked near the bottom of EW’s best shark movies list, but in the description of why it made their list, they explained it was said to be one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorites. And they could see why. It had to do with “the studly Euro-hunk Hugo Stiglitz and gratuitous nudity,” as well as “the swingin’ bed-hopping” and “its sweaty disco vibe.” All of which was “tailor-made for a ’70s drive-in double feature.” Sounds like something that would be right up Tarantino’s alley.

8. A couple of 3D movies made “best of” shark movie lists.

The good thing is you don’t need 3D glasses to enjoy Bait, Shark Night, or Jaws 3-D. Unless you happen to still have a working 3D TV. Then you can. (Remember that short-lived tech fad? Which really wasn’t all that long ago. So it’s very possible such TVs are still in fine working order.)

9. 6 movies on the list were ones based on true stories.

1. Jaws

Some argue a true story inspired Jaws but disagree about exactly which one. Many people credit the Jersey Shore Shark attacks of 1916 with inspiring Peter Benchley to write Jaws. History vs. Hollywood disputes that. They say it was actually a fisherman named Frank Mundus. To prove their case, they quoted Benchley explaining the connection:

…in 1964, I read an item in a newspaper about a fisherman who harpooned a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island. I remember thinking at the time, Lord! What would happen if one of those monsters came into a resort community and wouldn’t go away?

2. 12 Days of Terror

However, the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks did inspire 12 Days of Terror, a made-for-TV movie that landed on IMDb’s “best of” list.

3. USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage was a dramatized account of the cruiser that sank in the Philippine Sea during World War II after a Japanese submarine torpedoed it. (And after the Indianapolis delivered parts of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.)

Nearly 1,200 crewmen were on board. About 900 found themselves stranded at sea. Four days later, only 316 men were rescued. Many of the rest had been eaten by sharks. The horrific true nature of the story is why The Manual included the film on its list.

4. Open Water

Open Water, among the movies to land on nine out of the ten “best of” lists (only snubbed by The Manual), was based on the case of Tom and Eileen Lonergan. They were on a scuba diving trip in the Coral Sea and were mistakenly (some say negligently) left them behind after a dive. Their bodies were never found, but some “personal effects presumed” to belong to them were discovered, which led authorities to presume them dead.

5. Kon-Tiki

Kon-Tiki was based on the real-life expedition of the same name initiated by Thor Heyerdahl in 1947. He hypothesized that ancient people from South America could have also made long sea voyages in the Pacific Ocean. He felt it was plausible to believe that perhaps Polynesia wasn’t settled from west to east, as many anthropologists believed, but from east to west. So Heyerdahl and five other crewmembers built a primitive raft based on historical information and set out to test the theory. They did indeed prove such a feat was possible.

Neither Rotten Tomatoes nor The Manual justify why Kon-Tiki made their “best of” shark movie lists since it’s not the typical shark thriller movie. But of course, being on a small raft in a big ocean, they did encounter sharks —and luckily survived to tell the tale. But Heyerdahl recounted it was actually a rogue wave that gave him the biggest scare.

6. The Reef

A very similar incident happened to Ray Boundy that happened to the five characters in The Reef. Except in Boundy’s case, it was just him, his friend Dennis Patrick Murphy, and Murphy’s girlfriend Linda Anne Horton, who a tiger shark stalked and ate when their boat capsized in the Coral Sea in 1983.

10. Beware if you go to the Coral Sea.

I couldn’t help but notice at least two of the six shark movies based on true stories happened in the Coral Sea. My advice would be to tread carefully (pun intended) if you ever venture into those waters. Unless you’re hoping to inspire the next real-life shark encounter movie. That’s a weighty gamble, though. There’s no guarantee you’ll be among the survivors —if there are any.

11. 6 sequels made the lists, including all the Jaws ones.

Jaws 2 was among the movies that made nine out of the ten lists, while Jaws 3-D made The Manual’s “best of” list and Rotten Tomatoes’s “worst of” list. Jaws: The Revenge made Vulture and Entertainment Weekly’s “best of” lists, but it was the last entry on RT’s “worst of” selections.

Three-Headed Shark Attack, the follow-up to Two-Headed Shark Attack, made Cosmopolitan and Esquire’s lists. Cosmopolitan and Game Rant listed 47 Meters Down: Uncaged on their lists.

The Manual seemed to favor threequels, as it included Open Water 3: Cage Dive and Sharknado 3: Oh Hell no! on its list.

IGN was the only one to list Deep Blue Sea 3 among its picks.

12. A few super cheesy and implausible-sounding shark movies, like Sharknado, made multiple “best of” lists.

Sharknado surprisingly made six best shark movie lists, including Rotten Tomatoes, Cosmo, Vulture, Game Rant, Men’s Health, and Esquire. But perhaps it’s not so surprising. As RT put it, it’s “gloriously brainless” and “so bad it’s good.” Sometimes you just need a movie like that.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus found its way onto three lists: Cosmopolitan, Game Rant, and Esquire. And Men’s Health and Esquire included Planet of the Sharks on their lists.

13. 6 was a popular number for observations about best shark movie lists.

After reviewing my list of observations, one number jumped out at me: six. That’s how many shark movies were on nine out of the ten lists and how many lists included shark documentaries in addition to horror movies. It was also the number of based-on-a-true-story movies that made lists and how many sequels made the lists.

The 45 Shark Movies on the “Best of” Lists

Here are all the movies included on the lists I consulted for this post, including the documentaries. The only order they’re in is alphabetical:

1. 3-Headed Shark Attack
2. 12 Days of Terror
3. 47 Meters Down
4. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged
5. Bait 3D
6. Blue Water, White Death (documentary)
7. Dark Tide
8. Deep Blue Sea
9. Deep Blue Sea 3
10. Finding Nemo
11. Ghost Shark
12. Great White
13. Jaws
14. Jaws 2
15. Jaws 3-D
16. Jaws: The Revenge
17. Kon Tiki
18. Mako: The Jaws of Death
19. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
20. Ocean of Fear
21. Open Water
22. Open Water 3: Cage Dive
23. Planet of the Sharks
24. Playing with Sharks (documentary)
25. Shark!
26. Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth (documentary)
27. Sharknado
28. Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!
29. Sharknado: The 4th Awakens
30. Shark Lake
31. Shark Night 3D
32. Shark Tale
33. Sharks 3D
34. Sharks’ Treasure
35. Sharktopus
36. Sharkwater (documentary)
37. Sharkwater Extinction (documentary)
38. The Meg
39. The Reef
40. The Requin
41. The Shallows
42. Tintorera: Killer Shark
43. Toxic Shark
44. USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
45. Zombie

Check-In

What movies would make your favorite shark movies list?