When Jaws hit theaters in 1975, it did two things. The first was to create a feeling of fear when it came to swimming (the movie was said to have hurt the tourism industry in beachfront towns for years). The second thing it did was change the entire landscape of Hollywood when it came to summer blockbusters. However, while Jaws was an effective horror movie that broke the box office, it spawned something very different.
Through the four decades since Jaws terrorized movie-goers, Hollywood and video companies have worked to release a ton of silly shark attack movies that may have scary moments but remain pure pulp for fans. That does not mean they are not entertaining though, as even the silliest of popcorn fare can drive shark fans into a frenzy.
JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK
With the success of the pseudo-celebs from Jersey Shore, plenty of people wanted to see what would happen if characters like Snooki and The Situation ended up in the middle of a shark attack. Those dreams came true in 2012 when Jersey Shore Shark Attack came to Syfy.
The cast of the movie is strikingly similar to the real Jersey Shore cast members, with names like Nooki and The Complication slamming us over the head with that fact. If there is one downfall to this movie, it’s the fact that sharks don’t eat any of the Jersey Shore characters, but the fake-looking sharks and the carnage surrounding the cast is enough to keep anyone entertained.
MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS
It doesn’t get much sillier than taking a prehistoric megalodon and sending it into battle with a prehistoric giant octopus, with humans in the way of their battle. Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus started with a ridiculous premise.
A helicopter drops a sonar transmitter into the ocean, causing whales to go berserk. They start slamming into an iceberg, and when a helicopter crashes into it, it breaks open, and the two hibernating prehistoric creatures awake. This oddity was so popular with genre fans that sequels came, introducing a megalodon battling a crocosaurus among other ridiculousness.
JURASSIC SHARK
Jurassic Shark, also known as Attack of the Jurassic Shark, is a Canadian movie that mashes up Jaws with another Steven Spielberg movie in Jurassic Park. Of course, this is yet another in the long-line of megalodon movies, since a giant prehistoric shark is always scarier than a real Great White.
An oil rig digs too deep and releases the megalodon, and it sets its eyes on a group of art thieves. These thieves then decide retrieving a sunken painting is more important than not getting eaten by a giant freaking shark. The movie has terrible CGI and a fake-looking shark and is perfect for anyone wanting a late-night, so-bad-it’s-good shark movie.
3-HEADED SHARK ATTACK
In 2012, the tag line for a new shark movie asked what was scarier than a killer shark. The answer was revealed in 2-Headed Shark. In 2015, the sequel came out to reveal an even scarier sight: 3-Headed Shark! Released by Asylum, this movie has a cast that screams late-night B-movie.
The movie starts with the 3-headed shark killing a group of teens and then destroying an underwater lab, with only a handful of survivors. It turns out the sharks hate pollution, and the heads start to try to attack each other. There were sequels with 5- and 6-headed sharks, but this was the pinnacle of the franchise.
GHOST SHARK
The 2013 shark attack movie, Ghost Shark, isn’t about the real-life ghost sharks that live in the depths of the ocean. Instead, this is a supernatural horror movie on Syfy that is about an actual ghost of a shark. Critics panned the film, but the premise itself was so crazy that it built a cult following.
A great white shark eats the catch targeted by a sports fisherman. In a fit of rage and revenge, the fisherman captures and tortures the shark before killing it. When the corpse sinks into a mystical cave, it returns as a ghost shark and is out for revenge.
SHARKTOPUS
A joke among fans of B-grade horror movies is that a producer throw darts at a board and whatever they hit combines as the monster in their next film. A perfect example is the 2010 Syfy movie Sharktopus. This movie has the navy hire some smart people to create a new weapon: an intelligent shark with the tentacles of an octopus.
What could go wrong? The Sharktopus escapes after removing the control device and heads out to find food. Yes, Eric Roberts stars in this movie, which has a positive Rotten Tomatoes score despite its ludicrous premise.
SAND SHARKS
In real life, sand sharks are sharks that swim around the ocean floor and often come very close to the shore. The 2011 DTV movie Sand Sharks takes their name a little more literally. The sharks attacking in this film literally swim in the sand, meaning going in the ocean is not the dangerous part, and it is people on the beach who die.
The entire movie is a spoof of Jaws, with the mayor who doesn’t want to risk tourism money by shutting the beach down and the stranger who claims he knows what they are dealing with. The movie even stars the daughter of Hulk Hogan in a lead role.
MEG
The top three silly shark attack movies on this list are popular ones, two getting theatrical releases and one a hugely successful Syfy sequel. Meg is the newest movie on this list, released in 2018 on theater screens in glorious 3D. There are several megalodon movies on this list, but the studios created this one with an actual budget.
Despite that, the movie is as a cult classic, based on the novel by Steve Alten. Jason Statham stars in the film as a former rescue diver who quit years before when a rescue went wrong. He is called in to rescue a team stuck beneath the ocean floor, but when a megalodon follows them up, Jason Statham must go one-on-one with the beast.
SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE
The shark attack movie that set the world on fire was the Syfy original Sharknado. The entire premise was crazy enough that the film ended up as a massive sensation, with excellent television ratings and one of the largest social media audiences of any television movie in history. While that movie was incredible, Sharknado 2: The Second One upped the ante and was the better film.
The premise makes no sense: a tornado lifts sharks out of the water and spins them around, making them angry, before spitting them out over a city where they eat the first thing that gets in their path. It is up to Ian Ziering and Tara Reid to save the day. The second film is less serious, and a lot more fun than the original, making it immensely rewatchable.
DEEP BLUE SEA
Some would argue that Deep Blue Sea is not a “silly” shark attack movie, but a quality horror movie with genetically enhanced sharks. It is possibly the best movie on this list when it comes to quality, but at the end of the day, this movie knows it is supposed to be fun and always entertains.
LL Cool J is here as a chef with a parrot. Samuel L. Jackson is here at his expletive-yelling best, and he gets eaten by a shark. The sharks are genetically enhanced and smarter than usual, and it is up to Thomas Jane’s shark wrangler and Saffron Burrows’ scientist to save the day.
