Editorials
[‘Jaws’ Week] Is ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ Really That Bad?
Steven Spielberg’s classic film Jaws turns 40 today, you guys! To commemorate the event, we decided to take this last day of “Jaws Week” celebrate this tremendous feat for aquatic horror films (a sub-sub-genre I am a huge fan of). You read Chris Coffell’s thoughts on each film in the franchise yesterday, but I thought I would give the much-maligned Jaws: The Revenge another shot to see if it deserves all of its criticism. News flash: it does.
I don’t really know what I was expecting when I paid $3.99(!) on the PlayStation Store to rent this movie. It had been years since I’d seen it and I don’t remember it being as terrible as all the negative reviews and Razzie nominations (with only one win) suggested. Boy was I wrong. Jaws: The Revenge is a lazy, dumb and (most unforgivably) boring film that does not need to exist at all.
It’s difficult to discuss anything about Jaws: The Revenge that hasn’t already Rather than go over the issues of the film that are discussed ad nauseum (the roar of the shark, the fact that the shark has a vendetta and follows Ellen Brody to the Bahamas, etc.) and go into some of the other things that make the film so atrocious.
First of all, I would like to point out that Ellen Brody is an unstable woman, and needs to go to therapy. She is irrational and her decisions make no sense throughout the entirety of the film. There is no consistency to her character whatsoever. Also, the way she is written is kind of sexist (she only gets over her fear of the shark halfway through the movie after going on a date with Michael Caine’s Hoagie). She is given a sort of “shark sense” as well, which makes no sense. Basically, she can do exactly what Jake’s (Mario Van Peebles) tracking device can do and detect whenever the shark is attacking someone.
What is confounding about Jaws: The Revenge is that while the shark gets a lot of screen time, it doesn’t really do anything (and most of its screen time is in unnecessary dream sequences). The film can easily be divided into three parts: The first part is a drama following one woman’s grief over the loss of her son, the second part is a romantic comedy featuring Ellen and Hoagie (who spends most of the film sitting in his dinghy) and the third part is the actual “revenge” that the title refers to.
Director Joseph Sargent has stated that he wanted to make a quality film about human beings, which explains the lack of shark action and the emphasis on the romantic exploits of Ellen and Hoagie in the film. Much of Jaws: The Revenge doesn’t feel like an actual Jaws film, which is disappointing. Michael’s wife is also one of the strangest characters the series has ever seen, constantly having sex with Michael (seriously, that’s what she does during most of her screen time) and discussing it with Ellen.
Oh God, the dialogue. It’s the textbook definition of cringeworthy. There’s a moment where Michael and his wife are having a fight while she holds a blowtorch and he actually says (I swear I’m not making this up): “I’ve always wanted to make love to an angry welder. I’ve dreamed of nothing else since I was a small boy.” What. The. Fuck. Also, in the climax of the film, Michael asks his mother why she went after the shark. Her response? “I had to do it! There was nothing else to do!” Um, how about you just don’t go in the water? Which is what you have been telling everyone to do for the whole film. On his dancing date with Ellen, Hoagie states that he has two right feet. Ellen’s response? That it’s alright, because she has two left ones. Ugh.
The body count in the film is surprisingly low. Only two people get killed by the shark (three, if you count Jake’s death in the theatrical version of the film, which I don’t). The character motivations also don’t make much sense. The film seems to completely ignore Jaws 2 and 3, since Michael is still totally cool with going in the water, despite facing a great white shark 3 times before (there needs to be a happy medium between Michael’s and Ellen’s reactions to their pasts).
There are several instances where people know the shark is in the water, yet they insist on practically hanging over the edge of the boat (looking at you Sean). There’s a moment towards the end of the film where Hoagie lands his plane in the water so he, Michael and Jake can swim to the boat. Ellen goesThe list goes on and none of it makes any sense.
Anyway, this is my long harangue on Jaws: The Revenge. As many of you know, I can sometimes be too kind to bad movies, but there’s really no defending this one. It’s not even entertaining to watch. Being boring is the film’s biggest crime (and it commits many). What do you think of the film? Do you actually enjoy it? I confess, out of all the sequels, I have an unabashed love for Jaws 2, and I legitimately think it’s a good film. To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Jaws, let’s discuss the franchise’s up(s) and downs in the comments below!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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