Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast/Getty
Just about every movie about a rampaging shark can be described as a descendant of Jaws. Half a century later, the blood that Steven Spielberg spilled in the water is still drawing pretenders from the lower rungs of the food chain.
But how many of these bastard offspring have the chutzpah to directly quote the alpha predator that spawned them, the summer sensation that launched a thousand ship destroyers? Maneater, an abysmal new addition to the evolutionary line, dares to court direct comparisons with a parting line about the insufficient size of a boat. It’s like watching a minnow try to pass for a Megalodon.
Shark movies now arrive with a regularity that makes the Marvel assembly line look sluggish. They come in all shapes and sizes: While Hollywood unleashes variations expensive (The Meg) and relatively frugal (47 Meters Down) nearly every summer, the schlockmeisters at Syfy and The Asylum keep Redboxes and streaming libraries stocked with an endless supply of Z-grade fin flicks. Some even come courtesy of Roger Corman, godfather of B-horror and producer of one of the very best Jaws clones, the original 1978 Piranha. It seems rather unlikely that he’ll find the next Joe Dante (or Francis Ford Coppola) on the set of a Sharkopus sequel.