5 Best Shark Movies Nobody Talks About Anymore

Since Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" first swam onto screens in 1975, shark movies have been a staple of the entertainment industry. Just about any ranking of best shark movies of all time will put it at the top, as they should; it's by far still the best execution of what a shark movie can be.

However, there are a ton of shark movies other than "Jaws," and sadly most of them are really, really bad. Given that "Jaws" is still the best, however, you're not really looking for something that's going to top it. A good shark movie should offer a fun execution of the beloved tropes, whether or not it does anything innovative with them. Some do them well enough, while others bring a unique twist to the proceedings, but more often, they fall somewhere in between.

Mainstream audiences tend to dismiss shark movies, so they aren't always aware how much is out there that's worthwhile. The selections below may not be the best shark movies, but they're nevertheless entertaining efforts that people dismissed, forgot about, ignored, or maybe never even knew existed in the first place.

Everyone remembers "Sharknado." Do we even have to describe the premise? There's a tornado that has sharks flying around inside. It turns out that people didn't need more than that to tune in, because the Syfy Channel franchise dominated television in the 2010s. Endless sequels flooded the airwaves, gradually turning into the laughing stock that they themselves were initially spoofing.

Your memories of "Sharknado" might be about of what the franchise became — a cameo-packed live-action cartoon, with chainsaw-arms, sharks in space, and just about any other variation on the theme you can imagine. (In case you've forgotten, the "Sharknado" franchise ended with time travel). If that's the case, then you may not remember "Sharknado 2: The Second One." While the first film felt like a proof-of-concept, "The Second One" was actually pretty good.

This time around, Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, and friends travel to New York City to save them from their own Sharknado storm. While the first movie took place in Los Angeles, the sequel applied the silliness to spoof New York media culture. The world could always use a little more of that! Who doesn't want to see Matt Lauer eaten by a shark? It was bigger, brasher, and battier in perfect measure, before later sequels stuffed the concept to the gills.

Plenty of people still remember "47 Meters Down," the movie where Mandy Moore and "The Originals" actor Claire Holt go shark-diving in a cage that breaks, plummeting them down to the ocean depths.

But few remember the aptly-titled sequel "47 Meters Down: Uncaged," which applied a similar, claustrophobia-inducing format to a new cast and story. Instead of cage-diving, a group of young women go cave-diving, exploring a vast underwater system donning scuba gear. Unfortunately, an underwater earthquake means they're trapped, stuck figuring out a way out of this tunnel network ... which happens to be home to a bunch of hungry sharks.

"47 Meters Down: Uncaged" is a very silly movie, in some respects. There are some underwater antagonists who may as well be science fiction. The climax of the film, however, builds to an all-out, desperate race for freedom, and the movie suddenly explodes with color, action, conflict, and stakes. And even if "47 Meters Down: Uncaged" isn't objectively great, the end is brutal in the best way possible, making it a must-watch for shark movie fans.

Any shark movie fan worth their salt can tell you why 1999's "Deep Blue Sea" is worth your time. The movie's premise is so gleefully-silly that you just have to buy in — a bunch of scientists think they can cure Alzheimer's by breeding intelligent sharks, and instead they just made intelligent killer sharks.

Many fans might not know that "Deep Blue Sea" kept releasing low-budget sequels. It's completely understandable if you weren't aware of the existence of "Deep Blue Sea 3," which was released straight-to-streaming at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020. If you didn't know "Deep Blue Sea 3" exists, then you definitely won't know it's currently sitting at 79% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

In this sequel, scientists on a remote island facility learn that the hyper-intelligent sharks from the first movie are still out there. And they're smarter. Sure, the budget is way lower than the original "Deep Blue Sea," and the CGI somehow looks even worse than the first movie's 1999 attempt. But that's part of the fun; this sequel is the perfect mix of brutality and humor, leaning into its deficits in a way that strengthens the final product.

Several great shark movies have come out of Australia, including "Bait," a movie that traps a group of people in a flooded supermarket and sets sharks loose in the aisles. Unlike that movie, "The Reef" — the best Aussie shark movie, hands down — is a deeply bleak affair. It's great, but it's about a group of people coming to terms with the fact that they are doomed to watch their loved ones die one by one, dragged into the depths by vicious monsters, until they too must accept their own impending death. Not a fun film.

"The Reef: Stalked," meanwhile, dials up the mayhem. This one follows Nic (Teressa Liane), a young woman who has already witnessed a loved one's death; an attempt to heal is precisely what brought her to the water. A great white shark stalks Nic and her friends across the reef, and unlike the first film, which is about watching these people accept their inevitable death, Nic is resourceful, and you root for her ingenuity.

If this sounds like "The Shallows" – a great shark movie, and one of Blake Lively's biggest box office hits — you're not wrong. "The Reef: Stalked" adds in a couple of extra characters, though, so it's like a great variation on that theme.

Of all the films on this list, "Dangerous Animals" is the most likely to make the jump to a "best shark movies of all time" ranking ... if only more people knew it exists. Unlike some of these others — which we can all admit are really good for shark movies — "Dangerous Animals" is a legitimate blast. The movie is about a vicious serial killer named Bruce (Jai Courtney). The movie leans into the inherent humor of Bruce's over-the-top method, as he kills people by lowering them into the ocean, chumming the water, and watching the sharks go to town.

In Courtney's hands, however, Bruce is sometimes actually scary. He has a strange fixation on filming the murders, keeping records of the shark killings. In some ways, he's afraid to look directly at the violence he's committing. Instead, he's making shark movies, and the film draws several uncomfortable — and maybe even productive — parallels between shark and killer with audience and filmmaker.

Ultimately, though, even if you don't engage with it on that level, "Dangerous Animals" is happy to have you along for the ride anyway. This movie knows that in some cases, sharks are just plain awesome.