Jaws

Jaws Review

1975 proved a big year for Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of Peter Benchley’s novel. Jaws is about a peaceful town by the coast that becomes disturbed by a surprising shark attack. After that attack, it’s the sheriff’s (Roy Scheider) job to have the beast killed in order to restore peace and safety back to the town before the whole population ends up in the shark’s jaws.

As a naïve filmmaker, Spielberg’s film debut was Jaws. With such a basic plot, it’s hard to believe he would make it would create such a buzz. The reason it made such an impact was mostly because of the scare factor of not knowing what’s attacking (yes, it’s a shark, but how big? Why? When?) and the suspense of if they were ever going to catch it, or die trying.

The movie starts off with a suspenseful feel and it sets the mood for the rest of the movie because a woman disappears while in the water but the townspeople don’t know why. In fact, we don’t really see the shark until later in the film when we only see a fin. Spielberg even takes us to the point-of-view of the shark when he’s underwater. Even the sound goes numb when underwater and all one hears is the faint splashing and playing of people, but he makes you feel like the shark when he’s about to attack his prey. Later in the story when they set out to hunt the shark, you it’s suspenseful to wonder if when the shark is going to come or how it’s going to attack. I even noticed that most of the scenes where the shark could be seen, it would be at night or low lighting until the end. And when the shark would be seen, you could only see half of it so one still doesn’t know how big it really is. That may have been an accident because of an animatronic mishap, but it added on to the suspense. Spielberg accidents and purposive actions made for a terror film that came out on top and paved the way for his future films.