Jaws review: the shark that ruined the British seaside
Fifty years on, Spielberg’s Jaws still makes a paddle off Newquay feel risky. Here’s why the original blockbuster holds up and where to stream it in the UK.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 25 October 2026
Contents
I have never seen a great white shark off the coast of Cornwall. Neither have you. Statistically, the most dangerous thing on a British beach is a seagull with designs on your pasty. And yet a whole generation of us has stood waist-deep in the grey water at Woolacombe or Blackpool, heard two low notes in our heads, and suddenly remembered we fancied a cup of tea back on the sand.
That’s what Jaws did to us. Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller is half a century old, and it still lurks under every British bucket-and-spade holiday. The question is whether it works as a film, and not just as a childhood scar. It does. Very much so.
Premiere1975-06-20
GenreHorror, Thriller, Adventure
CastRoy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
Directed bySteven Spielberg
Running time124 min
RatedPG
Watch onPrime Video, Sky, NOW
77%
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A small town, a big fish and a mayor who won’t listen
The set-up is lean. Amity is a seaside town that lives off its summer visitors. When a great white shark starts attacking swimmers, the local police chief wants the beaches shut. The people who run the town would rather nobody mentioned the word shark until the holiday money is safely banked. Eventually the chief, a young marine biologist and a grizzled shark hunter go out to sea to kill the thing before it strikes again.
That’s all you need to know, and if somehow you’ve dodged the rest for 50 years, I’m not going to spoil it. What surprises you on a rewatch is how much of the first half is about a town council putting tourism ahead of common sense. Anyone who has sat through a parish meeting about parking charges in a seaside town will recognise it.
Who’s in it and who made it
Roy Scheider plays Brody, the police chief, a man who is scared of the water and is put in charge of an island. Richard Dreyfuss is the eager oceanographer Hooper, and Robert Shaw is Quint, the weather-beaten hunter who turns every scene he’s in into a masterclass in menace. Murray Hamilton is the mayor in the loud blazer who won’t shut the beaches. Lorraine Gary plays Brody’s wife, and Carl Gottlieb, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Benchley, the author of the original novel, also turns up on screen.
Spielberg directed it in his twenties. It was shot largely on location at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, out on the actual ocean, and the production famously ran over time and over budget. The film runs for 124 minutes and is rated PG, which will amaze anyone who saw it at eight and didn’t sleep for a week.
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What still works, and the bit that doesn’t
Nearly all of it works. The film’s greatest trick is how little shark you actually see. For long stretches the threat is a yellow barrel, a fin, a point-of-view shot from under the swimmers, and John Williams’ score doing the rest. Your imagination fills in the gaps, and your imagination is far nastier than any mechanical fish.
Jaws taught a nation of paddlers that the scariest thing in the sea is the bit you can’t see.
The three men on the boat in the second half are the heart of it: a working-class cop, a rich-kid scientist and an old sea dog, needling each other in a cramped cabin. The dialogue sounds loose and lived-in rather than written, and there’s one monologue from Shaw that still makes the room go quiet.
The weak spot? When the shark finally comes out of the water, it looks like what it is: a big rubber prop. Modern viewers raised on CGI may snigger. Let them. By that point you should be too tense to care.
What the critics say
The reputation is about as solid as film reputations get. On Rotten Tomatoes, Jaws has a 97 per cent Tomatometer score from 178 reviews, and 91 per cent of more than 250,000 audience ratings are positive. It is widely credited with inventing the summer blockbuster. When NPR marked its 50th anniversary, the network called it the film that launched Spielberg’s career and introduced the whole idea of the summer event movie.
It wasn’t adored by everyone in 1975. Newsweek’s original review called it grisly and “often ugly as sin”, but conceded that it achieved exactly what it set out to do: scare the hell out of you. Fifty years later, IMDb’s huge collection of user reviews keeps coming back to the same two things: the suspense Spielberg builds and those two notes of music.
Where to watch Jaws in the UK
In the UK, Jaws is currently available on Prime Video, and on Sky and NOW. If you prefer to own it, Universal sells it on Blu-ray, and it’s the sort of film that deserves a big screen, a decent sound system and the lights off. Ideally watch it in the summer, a few days before you head to St Ives or Bude. Then see how long you last past the shallows.
Verdict
Jaws is that rare thing, a classic that still lives up to its reputation: tense, funny, beautifully acted and built on the brilliant idea that less shark means more fear. The rubber fish has aged, but nothing else has. It’s essential for anyone who saw it the first time round and remembers the dread, and a perfect film to introduce to teenagers who think old films are boring. Just don’t watch it the night before a Cornish surfing lesson.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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