Adapted from Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is widely credited with inventing the summer blockbuster and reshaping the Hollywood film industry. The story of a great white shark terrorising a small beach town builds its dread through a masterful combination of John Williams’s iconic two-note score, carefully timed jump scares, and a series of drawn-out false alarms—demonstrating that what the audience doesn’t see can be more terrifying than what it does. The shark itself is famously absent for much of the film, partly due to a malfunctioning mechanical model, a limitation that Spielberg transformed into an exercise in suggestive suspense. The result is an all-time classic whose enormous cultural footprint extends far beyond the screen: it spawned a long-running franchise and, more unexpectedly, helped fuel a lasting public fear of sharks that continues to shape the species’ reputation decades later.

Steven Spielberg (b. 1946, United States) is a film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered the most commercially successful director to date. Throughout his career, Spielberg has created many Hollywood blockbusters, such as Jaws (1975), the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–1989), Jurassic Park (1993), Schindler's List (1993), and Saving Private Ryan (1998), and produced Back to the Future (1985). He is also the recipient of many Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards.