Beyond Top World Horror: Analyzing Humanist Shark Films

While the term “Top World Horror Movie” often evokes films designed to instill deep dread or existential terror, the horror genre encompasses a wide spectrum of styles and subgenres. In exploring the world of horror, particularly within the realm of creature features, a distinction emerges between films that immerse viewers in a terrifying, indifferent natural world and those that bring the threat into a human-centric narrative. My previous analysis touched upon “naturalistic horror,” where humans are vulnerable intruders in the shark’s domain, survival is uncertain, and death can be random. This post delves into a contrasting approach: “humanist horror.”

This variant distinguishes itself by positioning the shark threat firmly within human territory. Events, including character deaths, often seem governed by a set of human rules – typically, only characters deemed unsympathetic, annoying, or sacrificial extras fall victim. Crucially, the narrative arc ensures the main protagonists, or “good guys,” emerge victorious. Films adopting this approach frequently lean towards horror-comedy and tend to be less genuinely frightening, prioritizing human drama over primal terror.

A key characteristic of these humanist horror movies is their avoidance of the existential dread that comes from venturing into the vast, alien environment of the ocean. Instead, they relocate the danger to familiar, man-made settings. One notable example is the Australian-Singaporean film Bait (Kimble Rendell, 2012). Originally presented in 3D, the movie offers a prime illustration of this formula. A devastating tsunami strikes a coastal Australian town, trapping a diverse group of survivors inside a flooded supermarket. They soon discover the tsunami has brought an unexpected and terrifying intruder with it: a Great White Shark. The film chronicles their efforts to escape the aquatic predator now stalking the aisles. In typical humanist fashion, the shark’s victims are primarily characters the audience is encouraged to dislike, along with a couple of seemingly marginal good guys who make self-sacrificing plays for the benefit of the group (a dynamic that, troublingly, features characters of Singaporean origin in these sacrificial roles).

The confined setting—primarily the flooded grocery store and its parking garage—means the shark is exclusively shown within human space. It navigates the aisles like a shopper, albeit one with a very specific appetite.
Great White shark swimming down a flooded aisle in a supermarket in the horror movie Bait

Although the shark in Bait accumulates a significant body count, the film rarely achieves genuine terror. This is largely due to the constant presence of the human environment—walls, a roof, shelves—which contains the threat and subtly suggests the humans will ultimately prevail. And indeed, they do. The primary “good” characters (mostly white) survive, often pairing off uncannily, reminiscent of a cinematic Noah’s Ark, to survey the destruction. The film concludes with the main female character, Tina (Sharni Vinson), standing slightly behind the male lead, Josh (Xavier Samuel)—a subtle reinforcement of conventional gender roles within this “human order.” She asks, “What are we going to do now?” Josh, with a determined jawline, replies, “Start over,” as triumphant music swells. Unlike naturalistic horror, which treats genders equally as potential prey, humanist horror often seems to reinforce conventional heterosexual coupling and gender hierarchies. When considering different movie genres and styles, the way films portray relationships can be as varied as a list of world war movies or a rundown of most popular romantic movies in the world.

In fact, Bait and similar films share many characteristics with action films, particularly the natural disaster subgenre. The ending of Bait, with survivors surveying the damage and resolving to rebuild, is strikingly similar to the conclusion of San Andreas (Brad Peyton, 2015), a pure disaster film. In San Andreas, standing above the devastated San Francisco Bay Area, a female character asks hero Ray Gaines (Dwayne Johnson), “What do we do now?” He replies, “Rebuild,” as the camera focuses on an American flag and the score swells. Whether the threat is a tsunami, an earthquake, or sharks, these films emphasize the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring strength of the (heterosexual) couple.
A large shark leaps from flooded water, attacking a character in the humanist horror film Bait

SyFy channel’s wildly successful Sharknado (Anthony C. Ferrante, 2013) is another prime example of humanist shark horror, adhering strictly to the formula. A super-storm generates tornados that sweep sharks out of the ocean and deposit them in highly improbable locations across Los Angeles: piers, highways, swimming pools, mansion foyers, even attempting to chew through car roofs.
Sharks falling from the sky during a tornado, an iconic scene from the horror-comedy Sharknado

As expected, the “good” characters in Sharknado triumph, forming age-appropriate couplings by the film’s end. Hero Fin (Ian Ziering) reconciles with his estranged wife April (Tara Reid), a common trope in disaster films suggesting that catastrophe can fix marital problems. Nova (Cassie Scerbo), who harbored feelings for the older Fin, ends up with his son, Matt (Chuck Hittinger). The film concludes with embraces and a shot of the survivors facing the city’s wreckage, a dead shark in the foreground, but with a sense of hope for the future. These romantic subplots, while perhaps not making the list of world war love story movies, are central to the human drama.
Characters survey city wreckage with a dead shark in the foreground, concluding the movie Sharknado

Ultimately, films like Bait and Sharknado are not particularly terrifying because they reduce sharks to mere props within fundamentally human dramas. The sharks are stripped of their natural context and inherent terrifying reality, forced into environments constructed by humans to maintain control. This containment, both literal and metaphorical, prevents the development of genuine dread. They become, at best, “scary-fun,” a far cry from the chilling terror associated with what are considered the most effective “Top World Horror Movie” experiences. While these aren’t the films defining the list of 2022 most famous movie, they offer a fascinating case study in how horror can prioritize human narrative over the raw power of nature’s threat, diverging significantly from films focused on pure, unadulterated terror.