Jaws: The Revenge (1987) Review

Jaws: The Revenge (1987) Review 

Oh boy, here we go. Jaws: The Revenge is what happens when a movie franchise that shouldn’t have become a franchise in the first place is dragged out to its absolute limits. It is, without any shadow of a doubt, one of the worst sequels ever made, but it is also so incompetent, that it’s a hilarious sight to behold.

Sean Brody is on his boat in the middle of the night on Christmas, and gets attacked by a great white. Right away, things seem…off. The attack is rapidly cut, doesn’t really make visual sense, and sort of comes off as comical instead of scary. I first saw this movie sometime in elementary school, only because my mom rented it for me by accident, thinking it was the original Jaws (thanks, mom), and I found it just as baffling and un-scary back then. The main characters are Ellen Brody (Chief Brody’s widow) and Michael Brody, who move to the Bahamas, but are followed by the great white who killed Sean, and discover this shark is trying to polish off the last of the Brody clan, so Ellen has to take matters into her own hands. 

I’m not sure where to begin with Jaws: The Revenge. Let’s just start with the shark itself. This shark is, allegedly, getting “revenge” on the Brody’s, despite being a totally different shark from all the other movies—not to mention, sharks are not revenge-seeking animals. In the novelization, it’s explained that the shark is possessed by voodoo magic, which is why it acts more like a vengeful murderer than a real fish. This isn’t explained in the movie, though. The shark defies all laws of nature and physics—able to float, crawl through ship wreckage, hover above the water, hell, practically fly at times—and let’s not forget it swam from Massachusetts to the Bahamas in record time, literally travelling thousands of miles in only a few days. 

It’s tough to see Lorraine Gary return to the role of Ellen Brody—the role she’s most-known for—in this horrendous piece of filmmaking. And then there’s the baffling presence of the always-great Michael Caine. Famously, he’s said he’s never seen the movie, but the paycheck from it built him a nice house. At least these actors got paid; honestly, no one gives a truly horrible performance. The real tragedy of Revenge is the incompetent direction, laughable special effects, and bizarre events. 

Much of the movie is banal dialogue scenes, but it’s in the “horror” moments that it wows with the incompetence. There’s a clunky underwater chase through ship wreckage, the shark attacking bathers, and the shark’s final moments, which vary depending on what version you see: the original ending had a miniature ship impale a tiny model shark and kill it, and the reshot ending, which is more commonly found, has the shark explode from impact for absolutely no reason, except to allow using recycled footage from the original’s ending.   

One last thing I have to address regarding the whole franchise is roaring sharks. Yes, you read that correctly. The shark most famously roars in Jaws: The Revenge, but actually, I found it does this in the other films, too, including the original! Mind you, when the roar is used in Jaws during the shot when the shark sinks to the bottom of the ocean after its blown up, it’s subtle, and, as Spielberg explained in interviews, a purposeful homage, but in Jaws 2, the shark roars as it swims up to one of the sailboats, purely to seem scarier. Then in Jaws: The Revenge, it’s taken to the point of such blatancy it’s just ridiculous, and hilarious instead of scary. 

Jaws: The Revenge is a movie packed with such a number of so-bad-its-good moments that I couldn’t possibly do it justice. Just sit down with some beers, a bunch of friends, and put this flick on for some big laughs and serious head scratching. How such a magnificent film like the original Jaws could degrade so much with every sequel, until leading to such a fascinatingly bad movie like Jaws: The Revenge, remains one of those questions science still can’t answer.