Stay Out of the Water
Hollywood has been warning us for years: Stay out of the water. There are threats in the rivers, lakes, oceans and bays of the world, and every time we overstep our boundaries, innocent folks tend to pay the price.
Alexandre Aja’s upcoming CRAWL appears to be the next cautionary tale making its way to theatres, pitting Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper against a wave of killer alligators when a Category 5 hurricane blows through their Florida town. The trailer has its fair share of watery thrills. Check it out right now:
The CRAWL footage got us thinking about the best examples of dangers from the deep, so we wanted to spotlight a few more underwater terrors. You may swear off swimming altogether this summer after remembering these killer classics.
Jaws
The one that basically started it all. Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) warns the sleepy beach town about the great white shark that’s about to attack. No one listens, and a lot of people die. JAWS spawned a handful of sequels and changed the way the film industry treats summer blockbusters. Still one of the scariest movies of all time.
The Shallows
Good stories can be told over and over, no matter how many years go by, which is why star Blake Lively and director Jaume Collett-Serra struck a chord with their shark-assault thriller THE SHALLOWS decades after the chills of JAWS. There’s something disturbing about the depths of the ocean and the peril you can find yourself in when you are far from shore. THE SHALLOWS plays these notes beautifully.
Orca
Michael Anderson’s ORCA was a direct response to JAWS, replacing the great white shark with a killer whale. Equal parts MOBY DICK and JAWS, the movie actually got unfavorable criticism because of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, but now that years have passed, it’s worth a revisit, because it stands up pretty well on its own.
The Abyss
Threats from the deep don’t always have to be fish or mammal based. In James Cameron’s seminal sci-fi work, a deep-sea diving crew encounters extraterrestrial dangers that would create all sorts of headaches if they ever made their way to the surface. What’s located in the deep should stay in the deep, right?
The Meg
Why should JAWS have all of the fun? Summer 2018 audiences took a bite out of a new threat when Jason Statham stared down a megalodon in the new blockbuster. The shark was massive, and the guilty-pleasure laughs were just as big. THE MEG was such a hit that a sequel is in development. Will bigger actually be better?
If you’re not too terrified to go in the water after this feature, circle July 12 on your calendar to see Kaya Scodelario in CRAWL.