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Top five shark movies ahead of Meg 2: The Trench, as per IMDb
Mumbai: One of the greatest fears of beachgoers has always been that of being attacked by a huge white shark. It doesn’t help that these deadly predators can be found swimming the coastal waters of practically all major oceans. But, despite our fear of great whites, we can’t help but be fascinated by them. Franchises centred around these creatures such as Jaws and The Meg have been highly successful at the global box office. The Meg which released in 2018 created quite the stir and was widely praised by audiences and critics. The makers are now back with its sequel Meg 2: The Trench that can be watched this Friday onwards at your nearest PVR INOX cinemas. Ahead of its launch, here are five top rated thriller shark films to watch based on IMDb ratings.
1. Jaws (1975) – rated 8.1 on IMDb
One can say that Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is the OG shark film, the one that started our unending fascination around sharks. Everyone knows the film Jaws, but do you know it’s based on a novel? Adapted from author Peter Benchley’s bestseller by the same name, Jaws is centred on the series of shark attacks that occurred off the coast of New Jersey which drove a police officer, a marine biologist and a fisherman into a terrifying shark hunt.
2. Shallows – rated 6.3 on IMDb
Imagine being in the jaws of death despite safety being just a few meters away. This is the story of Shallows, starring Blake Lively as Nancy Adams. Post her mother’s demise, Nancy travels to a secluded beach to surf in peace but soon comes face to face with death. Stranded on a rock, her short but horrifying escape to safety will have you anxiously biting your nails.
3. Deep Blue Sea (1999) – rated 5.9 on IMDb
People say old is gold and we agree! 1999’s Deep Blue Sea is unique, even in its time, for combining the danger of genetic engineering with shark attacks. The story follows an Alzheimer’s study gone wrong when a group of researchers, in their quest for developing a cure, end up being hunted by the sharks they altered genetically during their experiments. Well, there’s a reason why you shouldn’t mess with mother nature.
4. Open Water – rated 5.8 on IMDb
A horror thriller becomes scarier when it’s based on true events and Open Water is one such film. It’s based on the tragic disappearance of Thomas and Eileen Lonergan who vanished while scuba diving and are speculated to have succumbed to a shark attack in the open waters. The film imagines the turmoil they may have faced, stranded in the middle of nowhere.
5. 47 Meters Down – rated 5.6 on IMDb
This film will drill aquaphobia, claustrophobia and galeophobia (fear of sharks) into your minds. It may also make you paranoid on vacations. The film follows two sister’s fight for survival on their vacation. Trapped in a shark cage at the bottom of the ocean with just an hour’s worth of oxygen and hungry circling sharks, the sisters must find a way to swim to the surface alive and in one piece.
6. Meg 2: The Trench (releasing on 4 August 2023)
If you haven’t watched the trailer already, please do so a glimpse of the fiercely entertaining upcoming sci-fi thriller Meg 2: The Trench. The film further explores an ancient behemoth shark, The Megalodon and its hold over the food chain, both on and offshore. Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) and his team are once again thrown into mortal peril as they try to outrun the ace predator they are trying to study and also a few more ancient giants.
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and SofÃa Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. SofÃa Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
