Sharksploitation is a pretty great deep (ahem) dive into the killer shark movie genre. You want to know about the earliest shark movies? They go back to at least the 1930s. You want to know the shark movies that immediately preceded the atomic bomb that was Jaws? You get that too.

I appreciated how seriously this doc treated every era and every type of shark film. It was just as serious about Jaws as it was about Ghost Shark, Sharktopus, or 6-Headed Shark Attack. They left it to interviews with the directors to acknowledge how silly their films are. So, yes, Sharknado is ridiculous but the doc itself doesn’t treat it so.

The interviews are the best part of the flick. They talk to Joe Dante who didn’t make a shark movie… he made Piranha. They land Roger Corman as well as the guys behind SyFy and The Asylum’s slate of terrible shark movies. We also hear from mythology experts, oceanographers, and the wife of Peter Benchley (who wrote Jaws).

Speaking of Jaws, the doc spends a significant amount of time talking about that film. It’s not the deep dive of a Making Of, but they do cover it enough to justify its importance to cinema. But they also interview the guys behind Jaws 2, Jaws 3D, and Jaws: The Revenge. When was the last time any documentary mentioned those films, much less treated them with respect?

I’m not sure if I “learned” a lot from this doc but that’s fine. It was a fun wandering through the history of these films, seeing clips, admiring the, ahem, questionable CGI, and hearing from their creators. Plus noting all the ones I haven’t seen… usually for good reason.

Score: 86