Is "Jaws" a really scary movie?

Well, it’s very gory, and the jump-scare factor is pretty high, but by now it’s a bit cheesy in its look. You might enjoy it, early Spielberg is kinda fun.

I think it’s terrifying for its time. It’s a fear of the unknown, like the fear of sticking your hand in a box with a hole in it and you don’t know what’s inside? When you’re bobbing in the murky ocean you have no idea what could be lurking just beneath you. As @canidmajor correctly points out, some of the effects aren’t really all that believable and with modern TV’s being so high resolution, the imperfections make it much more obvious that it’s all fake. I also agree that early Spielberg is fun.

I’d encourage you to give it a go but make it clear to your movie club friends that you might have to “bail out” (see what I did there?) if it’s too much for you.

It really isn’t gory, in my opinion. It has more jump scares than anything.

Jaws is one of the greatest movies ever. You have to see it. It’s a little scary

I’m thinking maybe I’ll watch it at home first and then decide whether to go see it in the theater.

For its time, it was very jump scary and intense.
I think you should see it.

@janbb You’re killing me Smalls!

It has moments that are thrilling rather than scary. It’s worth watching but I’d go straight for the theatre experience.

Don’t swim out too far in August, shark attacks are up this year. :-)

As someone who lives in the middle of the ocean, it’s terrifying.

I watched it again a few years ago, and it wasn’t all that scary. Not, um, really.

Dreyfus was a fresh new actor when he made Jaws. Now he is retired.

As others said, the movie is dated, but it’s a thriller. And the music adds to the moivie.

Relevent
https://foxtrot.com/2024/07/28/shark-attack/

I watched it not long after it came out. I found it to be gory past what I enjoyed. I think that if you watch it at home, you won’t feel the need to see it with your friends. I think you should find something very important to do that night & pass on this one.

It depends what you find scary. By today’s standards, as others have said, it’s pretty tame, and a lot of modern tv probably has more gore but if you have experienced a shark attack it may trigger. Famously it avoids showing the shark for most of the film as the as the shark effect wasnt that great and leaves most of the actual horror to the viewers imagination. Having said that it’s undeniably a classic, it basically created the modern summer blockbuster as a genre. The opportunity to watch a classic for the first time with an audience is quite rare and if you’re not enjoying it you can always leave and a get a drink etc.

@Lightlyseared Good points but I’ve watched many classic films with this club so I think I may pass on this one.

Thanks all!

IT’s just a great film. I am jealous you’re seeing it for the first time.

My husband and I watched it again in 4k on July 3 and it was so fun! I have seen it dozens of times but it had been a long time since I’ve watched it from beginning to end. It was kind of cheesy watching it now after all this time but it’s a fun ride.

Walking down memory lane.

Somewhere in the mid 1970s, a year or two after Jaws was released, MAD Magazine published a satire of it called ‘JEWS” – you can imagine how they handled it. (Keep in mind that the owner and publisher and most of the MAD writers were Jewish).

I wish I had kept those issues.

I’m not at all brave about movies, so I haven’t seen this one. I just wanted to share the website I use when I’m unsure about a certain movie. It’s called CommonSenseMedia. For me, movies are much less scary when I know what to expect. If you do see the movie ahead of time, maybe put it on in the background while you’re doing something else, ideally on mute.

Another thing you could do is google how they made the shark – it may take away a lot of the scare.

Personally, I was more afraid for the shark. I didn’t want to see it get hurt even though I knew it was fake. I know I’m in the minority with that.

@longgone Thanks for that site. It convinced me. Lots of blood and dismembered body parts and a child being eaten. Nope. I have too vivid an imagination.

Thanks all!

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh….a knife through my heart.

^^Too bloody. Maybe just poison in your tea?

She bailed out

I knew a guy from Martha’s Vineyard who worked on the set while it was filming. He had a small boat and was hired to ferry the crew to and from the filming barge. There were a few different fake sharks, the biggest was a front end model that was animatronic. A couple of times a circuit shorted out and the model would go a little berserk, thrashing about and opening and closing its mouth and freak everybody out. Nobody got hurt, but the divers were a bit wary. :-)

I recommend watching it at home and skipping the icky bits so you can enjoy the spielbergian aspects.

I hate scary movies, and maybe have seen 5 or 6 in my whole lifetime that are marketed as strictly scary. I saw Poltergeist 1, some Zombie movie, and a few others. I avoid them.

I saw about half of Jaws several years ago. I think I could watch it all the way through, it’s not one I would complete ban from my viewing at this point. I purposely avoided it when it was first released many years ago.

While making the movie, the special effects people has a lot of trouble with the “shark” robot. Because it wasn’t working, Spielberg had to pivot from a horror movie to a suspense movie, with horror moments. It’s like The Birds here.
I strongly encourage you to see this with an audience. Group experience builds the fear and the amusement in movies.

Depends. On whether the idea of swimming on open water while not seeing what’s beneath you is scary to you. I think the movie still effectively brings out that fear in the human mind.

There is gore. But only in one highly dramatic scene where there was, in my view, quite a lot.

Not to be gratuitous, but to show how it might actually look in that particular situation. Verisimilitude?

It was scary, when I was a little boy.

The movie has an entirely different meaning to me, now.
I LOVE the movie.
Such a cool story, and it really captures the small town vibe of northeast coast beach towns well.
I probably know almost every second of that movie.
It was one of the few dozen DVDs I had, in my old apartment. No cable. No streaming service.

I would go to sleep watching it, with my cats and dog all snuggled up with me.

My mother, is a very easy scare.
There are movies, she watches with her hands close to her face. If she gets scared, she covers her eyes.

Watch it with an old friend, if possible. It’s a great movie. A classic, of American visual art.