Jaws is a great movie (maybe the greatest movie ever made, if you’re Quentin Tarantino). There had been so-called ‘shark movies’ before it (from The White Death in 1936 to Shark! in 1969), and even one masterpiece (Blue Water, White Death from 1971), but it was Jaws that seemed to popularize the concept.
There have been several this year alone, including the pretty good The Reef: Stalked, and now there’s Maneater, from writer/director Justin Lee. Unfortunately, this film falls into the same trap as many others, misunderstanding what made Jaws so great.
It could be argued that Jaws wasn’t even a ‘shark movie’ at all; the shark in Steven Spielberg’s film was only on-screen for four minutes, and when it was, it was usually a pretty obvious animatronic machine. No, it was suspenseful direction, minimalist music, and great characters grounded within a tight script that made Jaws great, not the shark. Maneater forgets this entirely, producing a fairly hollow film as a result. It is, however, almost ‘so bad it’s good,’ from the utter silliness of some scenes and the cheapness of the CGI shark, to some comically questionable cinematic choices. Maneater is not a great movie; it may be a great drinking game, though.