Steven Spielberg
Lo Squalo

Water, with its depth and unexplored depths, has always evoked terrifying fantasies about monstrous and dangerous creatures that inhabit it: just think of the legend of the Loch Ness monster, born in the Middle Ages and still alive today. Beyond legends, the sea with its vast expanses has always aroused both fascination and fear.

One of the most unsettling films from this point of view is "Jaws" (1975) by Steven Spielberg, which partly recalls Captain Ahab's struggle against the mythical white whale in the novel Moby Dick. But while in the latter the battle between good and evil is symbolically depicted by the fight between the captain and the whale, in Spielberg's film the evil is not only represented by the huge and fierce great white shark that, after all, follows its predatory instinct, but especially by the mayor of Amity Island (where the story takes place) who, in order not to harm the financial interests of the area, refuses to ban swimming, endangering the lives of bathers. In a way, he becomes the shark in this situation.

However, it's certainly not the mayor who devours people: the most thrilling moments come from Spielberg's direction which, right from the first images, makes us enter the story from the shark's point of view with underwater subjective shots, special camera angles that give the impression of seeing through the shark's eyes, so that humans, seen from the seabed, appear like simple prey to a hungry creature. All this is then accompanied by a soundtrack that is legendary.

Simply the film that revolutionized the horror genre. Terrifying.