Jaws is obvious (though much of it is super dated for kids today) but eh, The Reef and Open Water to me were just low-budget slogs (marginal TV actors shivering and emoting) - whereas 47 MD and DBS were fun Friday night shark thrills (yes, brain off along with cellphone
.)
The Shallows just wasn't what I had thought it was at all - which was Gravity with a shark, like a "real" existential drama-thriller involving a battle with a shark/inner demons instead of space survival. Instead it was very much just a hot girl in a wetsuit battling a CGI shark - and that ending was the dumbest thing I've seen in a long time (the chain, pulled down etc.) It was fine thrills, but I was expecting something totally different.
What was funny was this article in Wired magazine that came out at the time of Shallows saying DBS was the better movie which I didn't agree with at the time, but in retrospect do because Shallows didn't resonate for me (it would have been interesting to see a theatrical sequel to DBS to see how they'd do that movie today instead of that DBS2 Blu-Ray movie):
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/deep-blue-sea-celebration/