Ever
since we first took our steps out of the water, we immediately looked back over
our shoulder and wondered what that splashing sound was. I was a member of the
Jaws generation, one of the more influential horror films in modern cinema. Not
just in terms of resetting and expanding what actually scares us by making use
of the water as the metaphor for The Great Unknown, but also in managing to
keep me out of swimming in a lake until I was a teenager. Even then, I stayed
in motion constantly, kicking my feet as if my life depended on it—which it
undoubtedly did.
What
about the water is so terrifying to us? Is it the idea that it can instantly
kill us? The fact that it slows us down and provides a hazard for us that the
predators can cheerfully ignore? Personally, I think there’s something primal,
if not primeval, about what lives in the crushing depths. We know we don’t
belong in the water any more, and they do. It’s their domain, and we’re just
trying to survive—badly.
