Sharksploitation: How Jaws Changed Horror and Shark Movies Forever

It’s been 50 years since Jaws made moviegoers second-guess their beach vacations, but its impact is still rippling through the horror genre. The film didn’t just invent the summer blockbuster.

It gave birth to a whole sub-genre: sharksploitation.

In our latest bonus episode, Paris and I dive into the evolution of shark horror, tracing how one animatronic malfunction led to a decades-long obsession with finned terror. We unpack how Jaws shaped public perception of sharks (spoiler: not for the better), and how that fear transformed into increasingly bizarre, campy, and sometimes downright unhinged shark movies.

What started as grounded suspense turned into ghost sharks appearing in slip-and-slides, tornadoes full of predators, and sharks that somehow end up in grocery stores. The sub-genre may have drifted far from Amity Island, but there’s still something to be said for its staying power.

Famed Deep Sea Hag Paris, who studied marine science, brings a grounded perspective to what Hollywood gets wrong. As it turns out, The Shallows doesn’t hold up under scientific scrutiny. We talk about why real sharks aren’t actually bloodthirsty villains, what the movies get hilariously wrong, and how some recent entries in the subgenre are bringing something fresh (and surprisingly emotional) to the table.

This episode is as much a celebration of shark horror as it is a critique of how these movies have evolved—and in some cases, derailed—over the past five decades.

If you want to hear the full breakdown (plus some strong opinions about candy cane horns, shark grudges, and my completely sincere defense of Jaws 3D), you can listen now on Patreon.

👉 Join our Patreon to unlock this episode and hundreds of hours of bonus content.

And remember: if you find yourself face-to-face with a shark in a grocery store… just wait it out. It’s probably in the wrong kind of water anyway.