Streaming Shark Movies: Which Ones Are Worth the Swim?

Streaming Shark Movies: Which Ones Are Worth the Swim? | Features

Streaming shark movies are everywhere now, and Charlotte Bond has waded into four of them. Her catch runs from Netflix’s brand new Thrash to the cage dive of 47 Meters Down, the lake house of Shark Night and the French river thriller Under Paris. She wants sharks that act like sharks, people who earn their peril and tension that builds rather than shouts. Some of these films pass that test with ease. One of them sinks without a trace. Here is how each one fares once the fins break the surface.

A good shark movie trusts its shark. Under Paris lets one animal behave like an animal and builds dread slowly, while Thrash and Shark Night lean on relentless predators and lazy shortcuts to peril. 47 Meters Down sits between them: smart, tense and almost cerebral, if emotionally thin.

Streaming Shark Movies: Life After the First Bite

Like many of my generation, the first shark movie I saw was Jaws (1975). In fact, the Jaws franchise was pretty much the only shark movies out there for quite some time.

Today, however, it’s a very different matter. There seem to be shark movies everywhere, and since quite a few of them were free to watch (and still are, at time of writing), I thought I would check them out.

Most are mediocre, but there is one standout gem that is not just a good shark movie but a good movie full stop.

Thrash (2026) Streaming on Netflix

Given that this was advertised all over Netflix and is brand new, Thrash seemed like the best place to start. A category 5 hurricane brings flooding and, worse, sharks to a small coastal town where the residents fight for survival, including an agoraphobic teenager, a pregnant woman, and three young siblings who are not only at the mercy of the sharks but of their uncaring foster parents. Can Djimon Hounsou rescue any of them in time?

This film started off predictable but promising. I thought the nods towards climate change and our altered weather were nice, and quite frankly it’s always a pleasure to watch Djimon Hounsou in anything.

Unfortunately, the promising start soon became a paint-by-numbers film. I thought it was an interesting reflection of my own viewing habits that the mention of bull sharks by the reporter at the beginning and the hints about the water rising to the point where Djimon jokes with his granddaughter that she’ll be swimming to her bed were all things that would not seem out of place in Jaws but now feel like they’re just too cliched. It seems that a shark movie has to do something pretty special these days to challenge its audience.

It wasn’t just the set-up that felt predictable: there’s a really obnoxious man who’s awful to kids and is just begging to be eaten all the while bragging about his large, unbreakable windows; and there’s a pregnant woman who promises she’ll get out of town quickly and absolutely, definitely won’t be giving birth any time soon (yeah, we all know where that is going).

This was a run-of-the-mill film and while I didn’t find myself engrossed, I wasn’t bored either. A few little bits certainly made me sit up and pay attention. I proper laughed (and rewound so I could laugh again) at the part where Djimon is asked about sharks and his response is: “That is grossly exaggerated and entirely inaccurate.” Hearing the news in the background telling people to write their name on their arm so that the authorities can identify your body afterwards seemed a little bit much even for American news channels, but it certainly gave me a chill.

One thing I always look for in shark movies is how easy it is for the sharks to get you. After all, “just don’t go in the water” would make a very short film. I liked how this film undermined the idea that you’re safe while you’re in a house. I also thought the death of one character right next to a car window where a second character was trapped was incredibly well done.

If I have one big complaint about this film, it would be Phoebe Dynevor’s character, whose main purpose seems to be the vulnerable pregnant woman. Whitney Peak (an actor I shall be watching with interest) did a really good turn as an agoraphobic teenager who has to cope with this sudden disaster, and even the three kids and their awful foster parents was not novel plotline but still one I was interested in seeing played out. But having a pregnant woman as a character felt like a cheap shortcut to peril; she was in danger just because she was pregnant, and the writers didn’t really bother to explore the emotional side of her character. It felt lazy.

This film is a good one to watch but only with low expectations. There are some really nice bits in it, such as the shot of the shark at night with the head torch which I felt was very effective, but it’s a pretty standard movie and nothing special.

47 Meters Down (2017) Streaming on Netflix

When two sisters on vacation in Mexico descend in a cage to swim with sharks, disaster strikes and they find themselves at the bottom of the ocean. With only an hour before their oxygen runs out, can they survive and resurface in time?

After watching Thrash, I have to admit I kinda rolled my eyes at the fact that the two men went down in the cage fine, and it was when the two young, attractive women in the bikinis went down that everything went wrong. However, that did mean that the next hour or so was dedicated to just two female actors on screen since the men didn’t really appear again until the end.

The tension build-up was good, and I was with them every step of the decision-making process. I hate it when characters act stupidly, and I thought the two women made smart decisions all the way through.

The crane falling over the door to the cage seemed a step too far and overdramatic, but it was sorted easily enough, and so I could let it go without spoiling the movie.

I particularly liked the minimal music in the film that made it feel less like a movie and more like watching real-life action unfold. There was some really interesting camera work too, such as close-up shots of dead fish and masks that gave ordinary things a more sinister aspect.

While there were ebbs and flows in the peril, the threat level was always manageable: the risk of sharks is always present, but the risk of air running out was more immediate, lending credibility to the women’s decisions to brave the outside of the cage.

Two issues I had with this film were that there was zero emotional journey for the characters and very little change of pace. Of course, I realise even as I write those words that the chances for exploring the emotional depth of the characters are limited when their faces are mostly covered by breathing masks, and also it’s hard to change pace when the whole episode plays out almost in real time. So while I wouldn’t classify these comments as criticism of the film, I would say that if that’s what you are looking for in your viewing experience, this is probably not the film for you.

One problem I did have with this film was the same as I noticed in Thrash: I don’t believe sharks would be that relentless. Why would they carry out a sustained attack on a cage when there’s easier prey around? That stretched my sense of disbelief somewhat.

Partway through the film, I remembered I had actually read a spoiler for the ending, and when the ending came and I saw it for myself, I was somewhat disappointed. This would have been a stronger film without that added dimension, but overall I enjoyed this film and found it more satisfying and cerebral than Thrash.

Shark Night (2011) Streaming on Prime

Okay, so whatever bad things I said about the movies above, I say this now: absolutely watch either of them rather than this dreadful film.

Seven college students go to spend the weekend at a lake house, but their idyll is shattered by terrible shark attacks and (spoilers) some crazy locals.

The beginning of the opening credits actually suggested this was going to be a promising, low-key atmospheric film – but then it suddenly became dramatic and massively over the top with industrial music alongside the credits. I should have switched off then.

This film was filled with innuendo and crassness, shoehorned in with no relevance to the plot. My jaw actually dropped when we cut to a new scene on campus where the camera follows a woman’s backside and then pans up to one of the main characters. We never see that woman’s face, she never appears again; it was literally just her backside in shot.

The characters are so stereotypical and flat they’d give you a paper cut. As I was watching it, I reflected that A Cabin in the Woods was made as an antidote for films just like this.

There was some attempt to give the main female character, Sarah, some backstory and allure. All the college kids lust after her, the locals seem to respect her, but all I could think was: Why? She’s an obnoxious cock tease. When two male characters ponder why she’s never gone on a date since they’ve known her, my gut feeling says: “This is a plot point that’s going to be crucial later,” while my general sense of decency screams: “No one has gone on a date with her because she’s an insincere bitch!”

My daughter often roots for the sharks in her favourite shark movies, and I shared some of her empathy here. When the shark finally appears, I felt a sense of relief that finally some of these dreadful characters would be killed off and I wouldn’t have to watch them any more. When it was clearly supposed to be a tense moment to see whether the first victim would reappear from the water, I just didn’t care.

Yet again, another film where the danger relies on the shark being relentless in its pursuit. And while I appreciate the film-makers trying to fit in more than one species of shark to try and mix things up, they get many negative points for including a whole host of sharks that rarely attack humans.

In an effort to keep the threat level high, it turns out later on that some of the locals are even more bloodthirsty than the sharks. Like the pregnant woman in Thrash, this felt like very lazy writing and just added to the general crassness of the film.

I often believe that for every bad book or movie there is a viewer out there who will appreciate it. But I challenge anyone to find anything of value in this film.

Under Paris (2024) Streaming on Netflix

Paris is set to host the World Triathlon Championships on the Seine for the first time ever, but then someone discovers a problem: there’s a shark in the river, and one that has already killed several humans. Sophia, a scientist who blames herself for those very deaths, must use her knowledge of the shark in question to join the river police and work to avoid a bloodbath.

This film is French with subtitles, but honestly that doesn’t detract from the tension at all; glance at the words, you can glean the gist of what is going on, and then focus on the action. Here is the low-key yet atmospheric film that I’d been hoping for all along. There is one shark. It doesn’t act out of character. People come face to face with it for good and natural reasons, not because a character has lost so much blood they think it’s a good idea to wade into the water and confront the shark with a handheld spear (I’m looking at you, Shark Night).

There are some deaths in this, and I like that one of them is evidenced simply by having a minor character on a bridge one moment and then not the next. It’s subtle but effective. The deaths feel meaningful because this film doesn’t come in all guns blazing but instead builds the tension slowly and steadily. I’m not rooting for the shark because I’m so engaged with the characters and the challenges they face in trying to get the city officials to listen to them.

When there is an underground bloodbath (before the championship kicks off), there are deaths not just because there are vicious and relentless sharks but because the survival instincts for some humans mean that they crush others in their bid to escape. In its own way, that’s just as chilling as seeing a shark attack and entirely believable. Far more poignant than crazy locals.

I particularly liked the opening sequence, before we get to Paris, where the scientists’ boat is out in the Pacific Ocean, but forging its way through a wealth of plastic. There are beautiful underwater shots, but instead of jewelled fish and gently waving seaweed, we have undulating plastic bags and reams of fishing nets. It’s a stark reminder of just what humanity is doing to the natural world. I also liked the fact that it’s never explicitly explained why the main shark, Lilith, is so different to the other sharks. There’s no mention of a secret government facility, or toxic waste. The shark just is, and there’s something simplistically sinister about not delving too deeply.

I have mixed feelings about the ending. I really liked it, but I did kind of feel that it went too big too fast. Imagine watching the slow and steady horror of Alien and then, instead of the ending being the face-off between Ripley and her nemesis, it is akin to the Marines going all-in during Alien 2. However, I did feel the ending to Under Paris, for all it got the wrong tone, was incredibly well directed and mesmerising to watch.

As much as I loved this film, I’m not enthused by the news that Under Paris 2 will premiere in 2027. To be a suitable follow-up, it would likely have to start where this one ends, and I can’t see how they’re going to incorporate in the sequel all the things I loved about the first one. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Under Paris so much, that I’ll likely at least give it a look.

Of all the shark movies I listed, this is hands down my favourite. Don’t be put off by it being French with subtitles; this is a film that is well worth 1 hour 44 minutes of your time.

Four streaming shark movies, one proper gem, and a lake house full of students the sharks are welcome to. If all that has put you off the bath, our horror features are a safer swim, and Ginger Nuts of Horror stays firmly on dry land.