In 1975, Steven Spielberg made Hollywood history when he adapted Peter Benchley’s Jaws to the big screen, making generations fall in love with shark movies and creature features. In the five decades since, countless directors have sought to bring audiences other great monster movies, focusing on anything from alligators to giant boars. While these films fall into the realm of ridicule more than most, some have emerged as great entries in the genre.
Creature feature movies can bring anything from horror and science fiction to comedy and adventure to the big screen, giving them an incredibly broad appeal. Although some of these films are great as B-movies, rather than respected cinema, others prove that monster movies have every right to stand out as fantastic stories. From their excellent visual effects to great characters, these movies gave audiences some great creature-based action still loved by fans today.
10 Anaconda Is Silly Fun
Streaming On Hulu
Anaconda focuses on a crew of filmmakers as they sail through the Amazon in search of a native tribe, hoping to document their way of life. Along the way, they encounter a shady poacher, who lures them into forbidden territory that’s home to a giant anaconda. Hoping to use them as bait, the ruthless hunter plans to catch the creature — only for the crew to fight back in their desperate bid to survive.
As far as creature feature movies go, Anaconda exists in the sweet spot of «so bad it’s good,» standing out as a great guilty pleasure for many horror fans. It doesn’t have the depth of Jaws, nor characters as compelling as Brody, Hooper and Quint, but it makes for a great popcorn movie all the same. From Jon Voight’s cheesy acting to Jennifer Lopez headlining the film, it’s a great monster adventure film that reinvigorated a world of cheap and silly creature features.
9 The Meg Pits An Action Hero Against A Giant Shark
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The Meg casts Jason Statham in the role of Jonas Taylor, a deep-sea diver whose crew finds themselves pitted against a Megalodon fresh from the Mariana Trench. With the entire ocean at risk, Taylor and his friends embark on a mission to find and stop the monster before it can wreak havoc on the world at sea.
The Meg takes the appeal of movies like Jaws to extremes, delivering simple fan service for people who like seeing sharks in action. Unlike most creature features, the film belongs more in the realm of action than horror or adventure, playing up Statham’s action hero persona to great effect. For people who want to see a fusion of Jurassic Park-style prehistoric monsters, the seafaring hunt of Jaws, and a modern action film, it’s hard to beat The Meg and its sequel.
8 Crawl Focuses On the Terror Of Alligators
Streaming On Paramount+
Crawl centers around a college swimmer, Haley Keller, who decides to ignore warnings and drive home to her father in the middle of a hurricane. When she arrives, she finds the house empty, with her father nowhere in sight. When she enters the crawl space, she’s horrified to find her father gravely injured, soon learning the building is infested with alligators. As the storm intensifies and the house begins to flood, Haley uses her swimming skills to keep her and her father alive.
Of all the modern creature feature movies, Crawl is one of the few that tries to take itself seriously, aiming for the intensity of a good survival thriller. Using the very real combined threats of hurricanes and alligators, the movie is every Floridian’s worst nightmare, and it makes for a great horror story. It might be far-fetched, but as far as monster movies go, it should be praised for some degree of realism.
7 Eight-Legged Freaks Is A Hilarious Spider Monster Movie
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Set in the town of Prosperity, Arizona, Eight Legged Freaks begins when some spiders are exposed to chemical waste, causing them to mutate into giant monsters. As they begin preying on the unsuspecting residents of Prosperity, the town sheriff rallies her deputies and an old friend to hunt the creatures down and rid the town of their terror.
Eight Legged Freaks embraces its B-movie tone to great effect, nailing everything great about its era’s sense of humor and fixation on silly monster movies. Starring David Arquette fresh from Scream, Kari Wuhrer and a young Scarlett Johansson, the film is perfect for people who love giant spider classics like Tarantula. Playing on a creature arguably more widely-feared than sharks, it’s a fun take on the Jaws formula.
6 Lake Placid Is Basically Jaws With A Crocodile
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Lake Placid revolves around a small town in Maine, as locals are terrorized by a giant crocodile in the lake. To try and make things safe, the sheriff teams up with a Fish & Wildlife officer, a paleontologist, and an eccentric crocodile expert, all butting heads along the way. Together, they go on a hunting expedition to try and find the creature and learn why it’s there.
The best way to explain the appeal and charm of Lake Placid is to pitch it as Jaws reworked into a campy crocodile adventure movie. Where Spielberg’s film takes itself relatively seriously, this is instead better viewed as a buddy comedy, with many of its best scenes being focused on banter, rather than horror. The crocodile sequences are great, but it’s hard to beat seeing Brendan Gleeson and Oliver Platt at each other’s throats.
5 Deep Blue Sea Pays Homage To Jaws
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Deep Blue Sea follows the staff of an ocean-based research facility that uses sharks to conduct experiments to use their cognitive function to treat Alzheimer’s. To do this, they must stimulate the growth of the creatures’ brains, boosting their intelligence. Naturally, these hyper-intelligent predators soon break free of their cages, hunting the humans throughout the slowly flooding facility.
After the end of the Jaws franchise, Deep Blue Sea emerged as the first decent shark movie in years, thanks to its impressive cast and focus on action. Adapting elements of the slasher genre into a great monster movie, the film plays on its claustrophobic underwater setting to make for a scary game of cat and mouse. For people who loved Jaws but hated the sequels, Deep Blue Sea makes for a worthy continuation of sharkmania.
4 Nope Is Jordan Peele's Love-Letter To Sci-Fi
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Nope focuses on a brother-sister team of movie horse wranglers, OJ and Em Haywood, as they begin to believe the skies above their desert home are home to an alien creature. Despite skepticism from those around them, the siblings set out to document proof that the monster exists — all while it causes chaos on the unsuspecting townspeople below.
Nope is Jordan Peele’s love-letter to classic science fiction and creature feature, paying homage to Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind at once. While including aliens in the realm of «creature feature» can be hotly-debated among fans, Peele’s film stands out as an exception for its intentional evocation of old-school monster movies.
3 Tremors Is B-Movie Cinema At Its Finest
Streaming On Paramount+
Tremors follows a pair of handymen, Val and Earl, as they discover a slew of dead bodies in their small desert town of Perfection. Initially believing a serial killer is at large, they catch the shock of their lives when they’re attacked by giant underground worm-like monsters. Realizing that they can’t walk on the ground without the creatures catching them, they and the townspeople band together to find a creative way to escape.
Tremors can best be summed up as «Jaws in the desert,» mirroring much of the formula that made Steven Spielberg’s movie so great. At its core, it’s a buddy comedy with a blend of neo-Western and horror, offering a quintessentially ’90s adventure that features some great character banter. The audience is given just enough of the film’s monsters to be evocative of Jaws, with a fun sci-fi twist delivering a unique monster in the Graboids. Though the sequels tried to capture the magic of the original, it was Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon’s chemistry that made it an icon.
2 The Host Brings Tragedy To The Creature Feature
Streaming On Max
Set in South Korea, The Host focuses on Park Gang-du, a well-meaning but ineffectual man who runs a snack shop with his father. While spending time with his daughter, Hyun-seo, a giant mutated monster emerges from the nearby river, slaughtering everything in its path and escaping with the girl in its clutches. Desperate to get her back, Gang-du turns to his family for help, despite their judgment of him for losing her. Together, they navigate the government’s crackdown over a feared virus to rescue Hyun-seo.
The Host helped bring the films of Bong Joon Ho the American mainstream, in no small part thanks to its use of the American political scene at the time as a basis for the story’s satire. Exploring everything from environmentalism and military malfeasance to South Korean society and family, the movie proved a great creature feature can be so much more.
1 Jurassic Park Is The King of Blockbuster Monster Movies
Rent On Prime Video Or AppleTV
Jurassic Park follows a group of scientists as they visit an island resort that a wealthy entrepreneur, John Hammond, has used to biologically engineer dinosaurs back into existence. When the park’s systems are sabotaged, it falls to Alan Grant to protect Hammond’s grandchildren as they make their way through dinosaur territory, as the other survivors try and get the defenses back up. Throughout the story, the audience is confronted with several ethical and philosophical questions, focusing on the age-old tale of humans failing to tame the natural world.
Jurassic Park may not lean into horror the way most creature feature movies do, instead giving the viewers thought-provoking science fiction. However, whether it’s Grant and the children fleeing the Tyrannosaurus Rex or the ending showdown with the Velociraptors, the movie is every bit as heart-pounding as Jaws or Crawl.
