Jaws (1975)

What many refer to as one of the most perfect examples of effective filmmaking, Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" brought the quintessential monster movie to mainstream audiences.  In the quiet New England town of Amity Island, a teenage girl goes missing from a party and her mangled remains are later found washed ashore.  Though a marine biologist, Hooper, determines the cause of death to be from a shark attack, the mayor of the town refuses to close the beaches in fear of hurting the tourism industry, which the town so dearly relies on.  After a young boy is killed by a shark, the town begins searching for this unseen beast in an attempt to stop the killings.  

After a shark believed to be the killer is caught and later discovered not to be the one, Hooper and the benevolent police chief Brody set out to track and capture the true killer shark with the help of salty shark hunter, Quint, whose deep hatred for sharks is rooted in his own narrow escape from one during a shipwreck.  Ultimately, Quint's mad desire to kill the shark paralyzes their boat, leaving them stranded and vulnerable to the aquatic murderer.  The beast leaps onto the boat, sending Quint into its gnashing JAWS, as Brody seeks to save his own life atop the now sinking ship.  After successfully placing a scuba tank in the shark's JAWS, Brody exhibits his excellent marksmanship in shooting the tank with a rifle, exploding the shark into thousands of pieces and especially damaging the shark's JAWS.

Though it wasn't his original intention, Spielberg's decision not to showcase the actual shark served to only make the beast more frightening.  From even quiet scenes of an eerily undulating buoy, Spielberg is able to cull pure terror from an unseen villain, exemplifying the classic story structure of Man versus The Unknown, the sleepy American town undone by a mysterious and inhuman killer.  John Williams' iconic score adds to the uneasiness of the film, the now well-known two note phrase has become part of cinema legend, and can inspire fear even divorced from the image itself.  Spielberg's employing of water-level filming helps the audience experience the sensation of being in the water with the lurking shark, and his notable use of the Vertigo "dolly in, zoom out" technique shows a director unafraid to push his audience into unease and feel the terror that the film's characters are experiencing.  This being his first feature film, "Jaws" catapulted Spielberg into the upper echelon of successful filmmakers, and was a sign of future greatest to come.