PG-13 | | Horror, Thriller | 16 June 2017 (USA)
What’s the key ingredient in most horror films? An undefined horribleness in the house. In shark horror movies? Man-eaters in the undefined, gloomy depths. Nobody captured this creeping dread better than Ian Fleming, creator of “James Bond”:
“A big barracuda, if it is 20 pounds or over, is the most fearsome fish in the seas. ... This one, moving parallel with Bond, 10 yards away just inside the wall of grey mist that was the edge of visibility, was showing its danger signals. The broad lateral stripes showed vividly—the angry hunting sign—the gold and black tiger’s eye was on him, watchful, incurious, and the long mouth was open half an inch so that the moonlight glittered on the sharpest row of teeth in the ocean ...”
Brrrrr. Except Fleming was wrong. The 6-foot giant barracuda, while horrific, is nowhere near as scary as ... the 20-foot Great. White. Shark. I mean, c’mon, “sharpest row of teeth in the ocean?” Are you kidding me? You know whereof I speak. “Jaws” and its many knock-offs, YouTube’s endless array of scary animal/insect videos, and “Shark Week” have been with us for decades now.
