Jaws: Critic Reviews

One of the most effective thrillers ever made.

Steven Spielberg's mechanical thriller is guaranteed to make you scream on schedule.

The fast-moving 124-minute film engenders enormous suspense as the shark attacks a succession of people.

When it comes to this kind of thriller, no movie has been able to top Jaws, although many have tried. And, as the years go by, it seems increasingly unlikely that anything will come close.

Spielberg works self-effacingly, with subtly correct camera placement and meticulous editing. He twists our guts with false alarms, giving us the real thing with heart-stopping suddenness.

Five-star movie could scare the pants off kids.

To be brief and to the point, the GREATEST FILM EVER MADE! Thank you for your time.

Simply put, Jaws turned the tide of American cinema: irrevocably, and not for the better.

In the end, the shark is a MacGuffin necessary for the men to bond and test themselves against what they fear most--their own mortality.

A looming, terrifying catch of the day.

A classic. Tense, engrossing, scary and, subsequently, endlessly influential.

Like all the best suspense films, "Jaws" manages to somehow remain amazingly tense, even if you've seen the film before. No wonder so many moviegoers went back for repeat viewings.

A reminder that, once upon a time, Spielberg used to make films for adults rather than infants and critical regressives.

A true film of the 70s, all its characters have feet of clay… Yet Jaws boldly puts [them] to a test as dire as any faced by the granite-jawed supermen of earlier decades.

A masterpiece.

Achieves a number of cheap thrills at the expense of the mechanical shark.

Along with being a terrific character-driven (not plot) thriller, Jaws should be viewed against the broader context of 1975 as part of a cycle of paranoia films, reflecting the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, anti-authoritarianism, and political apathy

Nowadays, it doesn't really scare me anymore, but I love watching it for the way it moves.

The first calculated summertime blockbuster...A whale of big-budget Hollywood entertainment.

Jaws' formula has become a facsimiled equation for profit, of which the opening is the preeminent, telling feature.

One of the greatest horror films made. The opening sequence is not only a classic, it's still frightening nearly three decades after it was made.

It just might be one of the very best movies ever made.