The Holiday-Themed Shark Movie You Must Watch After Meg 2
Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" influenced the entertainment industry in more ways than one. It's often credited with kicking off the summer blockbuster, where studios save their biggest and likely highest-performing movies for the summer months. And while it certainly wasn't the first movie about a killer animal, many films followed that drew inspiration from "Jaws," including the recent "Meg 2: The Trench."
The sequel to "The Meg" once again sees Jason Statham fight a giant Megalodon shark. It should make for some campy fun, but for anyone interested in seeing what goofy shark movies followed in the vein of "Jaws," one film must be on your watchlist. "Sharknado" and "Sharktopus" may have grabbed headlines, but you can get in the festive spirit by checking out "Santa Jaws," which is available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.
As one can surmise from the title, the SyFy movie involves a shark killing a bunch of people while wearing a Santa hat. The beast is actually a result of budding comic book artist, Cody (Reid Miller), drawing Santa Jaws with a magical pen and wishing he could be alone for the holidays. Unfortunately, this results in Santa Jaws becoming real and taking out Cody's family, meaning it's up to him to stop the shark and save his family.
As far as schlocky shark movies go, many critics enjoy Santa Jaws
Look, it's a movie called "Santa Jaws" where a shark wears a Santa hat and has green and red teeth. It's not exactly "Citizen Kane," but if you're in the mood for some dumb nonsense, you can do a lot worse. It's solid B-movie fun with wonky digital effects and a script that probably could've used another polish. But if you get a bunch of people over, there's little doubt you can have fun with the decidedly silly premise. The shark gets a candy cane horn like a narwhal it uses to stab its victims, so what more can you really ask for?
For what it's worth, many critics had fun with "Santa Jaws," accepting it for what it is. Chris Coffel of Bloody Disgusting understood the assignment, writing, "It's actually made with real effort in an attempt to make that absurdity work. Santa Jaws may have been birthed like many of the other recent shark flicks, but it's quite a bit better and deserves to be treated as such." Felix Vasquez of Cinema Crazed even came up with an idea for a sequel, "In the end, I got a fairly decent horror comedy with a hilarious sense of humor about itself. Now let's see a sequel 'Santa Jaws vs. the Hallowhale'!"
Just like "Meg 2: The Trench" is probably best enjoyed with your brain dialed down a few notches, "Santa Jaws" knows what it is and offers silly fun for anyone willing to give it a chance. And if Warner Bros. is looking for a concept for "Meg 3," might we suggest the Megalodon eating Santa Claus, gaining his powers, and being able to travel around the world in one night to eat everyone? Any excuse to get Jason Statham to say, "Ho ho ho," before shooting a shark with a harpoon.