The ocean will never be the same.

Rating: 10/10 (13 April 2006)

The best thing that happened for this movie was the fact that the artificial shark broke and couldn't be used much. The audience's imagination is MUCH more powerful than any animatronic gadget ever could be. If it were made today, there would be millions of dollars worth of CGI shark shots and it wouldn't be scary at all. Rubber and pixels don't scare us. Ideas scare us. Just give us a visual taste of shark here and there, that's all we need to scare ourselves silly.
It is the idea of the unknown and what could be lurking just out of sight that makes this movie so scary. It's all about the small boat, the big ocean, and the fact that the attack could come from anywhere. And that's what makes it continue to scare you when you go near water years later. If the shark worked and our fear was based on seeing the shark, then at the beach you'd say "well, I don't see a big rubber shark anywhere, so I'm okay". But when it's the fear of the unknown, you go to the beach and say "hmmm, this looks a lot like Jaws", and you think twice about going in the water.
Great performances all around, but Robert Shaw as the semi-insane shark hunter Quint is the best and most memorable in my opinion. Every line he spoke was priceless, whether it made you laugh out loud or shiver in fear. It's too bad some of his scenes were cut.
This is one of those weird movies that you can watch a hundred times and still not get tired of. It gets you creeped out right from the first scene and never really lets go. Every time it's on TV I say "well I'll just watch 5 or 10 minutes", and before I know it I've watched the whole thing again. A masterpiece, thanks to the broken shark!