by Nelson
Don’t worry. I have a lot of trouble making it through Jaws 3D without falling asleep, so this is the last Jaws flick left for me to devote an article to. And, boy, does this movie leave one with a lot to talk about. So much so that there’s very little for me to say that hasn’t already been said by someone else. There are tons of write-ups out there about the numerous absurdities that plague the fourth and final entry of a series of films that, if we’re being totally honest, probably shouldn’t have been a series of films at all. The late comedian Richard Jeni even did a whole routine on The Tonight Show devoted to Jaws: The Revenge being the worst movie of all time. Tastes are subjective, but there’s simply no denying that this film is plagued by a myriad of issues that don’t all center around the fairly problematic plot.
But still, there’s just something about this movie that stuck with me. For everything wrong with it, it’s got this sinister edge that has unsettled me since the first time I saw it.
I’m terrified, absolutely terrified, of sharks because of these movies – all of them. Well, except for 3D. Even as a second grader, that one has always hit me like a cinematic tranquilizer dart. A lot of my sharkphobia came from watching Chrissie Watkins be tossed around the ocean while screaming for God to save her in the greatest opening scene of all time, but Jaws: The Revenge was the movie that really, really took a gradually developing childhood fear and cemented it as a lifelong terror that I’ll have nightmares about until the day I am consumed by a shark that’s emerged from the bathtub drain while I’m taking a shower… because The Revenge is the movie that went all in on the oversized great white being an out-and-out villain driven by will instead of instinct.
In Peter Benchley’s novel, Amity’s postmistress tells anyone within earshot that a divine punishment sporting a fin is being unleashed on the town for all of its misdeeds. And later, during the showdown on the Orca, Martin Brody makes eye contact with the fish and, for a moment, has a horrifying sense that it knows what it’s doing – that it’s acting maliciously. Now there’s not much about the book that I’ll say the movie doesn’t do better, but this particular element was one thing that I always liked about the source material. And, hey, maybe I’m not the only one. Deep Blue Sea was all about sharks being bad on purpose, and that movie managed to spawn a rap song about sharks.
Anyway, one of the crucial plot points of Jaws is that great whites don’t typically hang out in warm waters, and that, along with good old fashioned greed, is why everyone is so skeptical that there’s an issue even after Chrissie’s chewed up remains are found on the beach. Even if it was one of those nasty man eaters, it’s not gonna stick around or anything, so when another shark pops up in Amity and proceeds to do the same thing in the sequel, you’ve got to suspend your disbelief just a bit. Even Chief Brody is starting to think that maybe these fish just have it out for the folks living on the island ever since someone condescendingly explained to it that it would never be an islander because if you’re not born on the island, you’re not an islander. But, in Jaws 2, Not Hooper pops up solely to shoot Brody’s suspicions down, and the idea doesn’t come back up.
But The Revenge is all about a shark being pissed off at the family of the man who killed another shark a few years back. And, as we find out in the opening sequence when Sean Brody is brutally attacked after being lured to the water by a piece of driftwood, there’s absolutely no question about it. This fish doesn’t hate Amity Island, it just hates the Brodys.
That alone is enough to make a lot of people roll their eyes. And I get it. But it absolutely horrified me. Underwater creatures with mouths full of sharp teeth capable of tearing you to shreds were scary enough on their own, but one that carries a vendetta to the extent that it’s laying traps to get you out on the water? That got to me. That upped the ante. For me, The Revenge was the series entry that came the closest to being a full-on horror movie because, this time around, we weren’t dealing with any old shark; we were dealing with a straight up evil monster shark that, for all we knew, could be the ghost of the first one considering all of its weirdly supernatural abilities. (Interestingly enough, Bruce IV’s mother is the shark Brody blew up in the movie’s novelization, but it’s also controlled by a witch doctor, so…)
The opening attack sequence on Sean is particularly disturbing. It really doesn’t look all that great as far shark attack scenes go in these movies, but the point where the younger Brody brother realizes his arm has been bitten off is almost hard to watch, and his screams being drowned out by an assemblage of Christmas Carolers adds an element of evil irony that you don’t see very often in the other movies. It harkens back to the sheer unrelenting cruelty of the Chrissie attack. Interestingly, it also kinda/sorta mirrors the book’s depiction but swaps Chrissie’s missing leg for Sean’s missing arm.
Of course, things rapidly go downhill after the opening. Ellen Brody just isn’t interesting enough to be the main character, and the movie makes the same mistake Peter Benchley does in the book with way too much character drama and not enough shark shenanigans. But that doesn’t change the fact that the big guy has a straight up slasher movie chase sequence with Michael Brody in a sunken ship. Absolute nightmare fuel.
It’s the execution, not the concept, that matters, and the execution of Jaws: The Revenge leaves a lot to be desired. There’s a good movie, a scary movie even, begging to get out, but it’s buried by a boring narrative that spends way too much time focusing on the wrong things. Michael’s wife’s art project is about as interesting as Road Dogg’s run as a singles wrestler; I didn’t care about Ellen Brody’s insecurities when I read Benchley’s book, and I sure don’t care about them in a movie that’s supposed to be about a shark literally stalking her family. For all of the attention critics usually level towards the shark, you’d think it had a bigger role.
But, still, you’ve still got a fish following a woman from Amity Island to the Bahamas in a matter of days. It still walks on its tail and roars, and it still explodes to smithereens when you stab it with a boat bow. I can’t say that any of that stuff is good in retrospect. It’s not. But what I can say is that The Revenge is one of those weird movies that had a significant impact on me despite not being all that great or fun to watch.
And, when a shark finally does pop out of my shower drain to eat me alive, you can damn well bet that it’s going to be one of those supernatural monster sharks like the one here.
Doubtfire 