My Thoughts on Jaws

The 1975 thriller Jaws was directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It stars Roy Scheider as Brody, the chief of police, Richard Dreyfuss who plays Hooper, a marine biologist, and Robert Shaw who plays Quint, a shark hunter. The film begins with some college kids on a beach on Amity Island at night and a girl decides to go swimming. While swimming, the girl gets attacked and eaten by a shark. The next morning the police find the body and send the body to the morgue to find out what happened. They find out she was attacked by a shark, so Brody tries to shut down the beaches until they can deal with the shark. The mayor says he can't because the town realizes on the beaches for money and the 4th of July is coming up. Another shark attack happens, but this time a little boy dies. This causes panic in the town, but the mayor tells them not to worry. The boy's mom puts up a flyer giving anyone $3,000 for catching the shark. The fishermen flood the ocean looking for the shark and eventually come back with one. However, this isn't the shark as confirmed by Hooper, who just came to town. They tell the mayor, but he refuses to close the beaches and hundreds of people are at the beaches on the 4th of July. There is yet another shark attack and another person dies with Chief Brody's son having a close encounter with the shark. At this point, Chief Brody and Hooper hire Quint to help them catch the shark. After a long few days on the water, they eventually kill the shark, but the boat and Quint don't make it. 

I thought the movie was good. It was a little slow at the beginning but definitely picked up toward the end of the film. The movie had some shots that stood out the me. I think the shots from the perspective of the shark were very important to the film. These shots were not only creative and impressive but also created a large amount of suspense. Whenever these shots were on screen, the audience knew that something bad was going to happen and someone was likely going to die. For a film that used little to no CGI, the movie was very impressive. Some movies often look a little goofy when trying to get the shark attacks done right, but I think that Steven Spielberg did a really good job making the movie as realistic as possible. Sound also played a huge role in this movie. There were many times when the non-diegetic sound helped to add suspense to moments when the shark was about to attack or even just in a shot. Jaws is obviously a classic film and is seen as one of the first blockbuster movies. It paved the way for many other shark-based movies such as Sharknado, Meg, 47 Meters Down, etc.