‘Hot Spring Shark Attack’ is the shark thriller we didn’t know we needed
It is categorically unlikely that Morihito Inoue’s new movie, Hot Spring Shark Attack (Japanese title: Onsen shâku), released initially in July, will strike fear into audiences at the thought of taking a relaxing dip in effervescent geothermally heated waters. Hot Spring Shark Attack isn’t Jaws, the film that gave moviegoers unhealthy and pronounced cases of generational galeophobia; Steven Spielberg neither meant for that to happen, nor could’ve predicted the phenomenon. He also may not have guessed, as he and his crew were wrangling an uncooperative mechanical shark on set in 1975, that they were making a future all-timer in movie history responsible for spawning shivers of mostly embarrassing imitators.
Jaws made people afraid to go into the water. No single shark movie released since has left such an impression on popular culture. Rather, shark movies collectively have stoked our anxieties about beach days and boat trips. Exceptional entries in the “shark thriller” or “shark horror” niches, like Open Water and The Shallows, are the beneficiaries of Jaws’ legacy—good movies, certainly, but especially testaments to the latter’s meteoric impact. There’s no profit in attempting to top Spielberg’s work here. It’s to the credit of everyone who’s directed a shark movie released since that they don’t bother trying.
Hot Spring Shark Attack, strictly speaking, fits that bill. Inoue’s love of Jaws is clear and present in his film’s DNA, not to mention his visual homages. A shot of a severed leg drifting to the bottom of a tub, trailing a blood plume, recalls Jaws’ famous image of the mangled shank of the anonymous “estuary victim” (Ted Grossman) drifting onto the lagoon’s bed. And Kanichi (Takuya Fujimura), Inoue’s unexpected hero and Atsumi’s amoral mayor, recycles Chief Brody’s (Roy Scheider) parting shot at his own nemesis in the climax.
The poster for "Hot Spring Shark Attack."
Poster for "Hot Spring Shark Attack"
That level of referentialism would probably feel exhausting, not to mention shady, if not for the obvious and unabashed reverence Hot Spring Shark Attack shows to Spielberg’s masterpiece. Inoue jam-packs that emotional component into just 70 minutes of plot, as the resort town of Atsumi falls under attack from an ancient shark species, reawakened from their countless years of slumber and hungry for fresh meat—tourist meat, casually marinating in the waters of the city’s selection of onsen. (Technically, Atsumi no longer exists as the city folded into Tahara after a municipal merger in 2005. Its wealth of onsens remains, though.)
You would think a hot spring would grant safe harbor from ravenous Carcharodons. You would be wrong. “As you may know, sharks are cartilaginous fish,” explains Dr. Kose (Yuu Nakanishi), sent by Jounan University’s marine biology lab to investigate a rash of bizarre deaths in Atsumi. “They have skeletons made of cartilage, rather than bone.” For anyone who’s ever wondered, this is why shark fossils are so rare, other than, of course, teeth. Kose breaks it down thusly: Because the sharks’ bodies are so soft, they’re able to squeeze through the plumbing leading into onsens—like aquatic kin to Eugene Tooms—where they do not devour their prey, but instead drag them to death, back through those pipes into the depths below.
The sharks in "Hot Spring Shark Attack" are an ancient species, reawakened from countless years of slumber and hungry for fresh meat.
Still from "Hot Spring Shark Attack"
It’s a theory that stretches belief for laypeople like Atsumi’s chief of police, Denbei Tsuka (Kiyobumi Kaneko), and, well, really it’s just Tsuka; everyone else buys it. He’s inching toward retirement, thinking about the next chapter in his life, and wholly incredulous of Kose’s theory. That’s because he’s a serious lawman, introduced midway through a target practice session at the shooting range, spelling out Atsumi’s name in bullet holes. (He also has a fistful of fancypants notions of what he’ll do with himself once he’s out of the work force, including becoming a manga artist.) Besides, somebody has to point out the innate silliness of Hot Spring Shark Attack’s basic conceit.
Make no mistake. It is very silly, peak silly even, which is a high honor among shark genre cinema’s annals. The Meg isn’t even a blip on the radar in those teeming waters. Try Sharktopus, Avalanche Sharks, Sand Sharks, 2-Headed Shark Attack, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, Swamp Shark, and The Last Shark. To the ear, all Inoue has done with Hot Spring Shark Attack, a movie in which sharks attack people in hot springs, is add another onion to the soup. Do we need more dumb shark movies? Is there a limit to how dumb a shark movie can—nay, should—be? Why should anyone bother with this shark movie, especially when 2025 has produced an uncommonly good one in Sean Byrne’s Dangerous Animals?
In "Hot Spring Shark Attack" the town of Atsumi is hit with a rash of bizarre deaths.
Still from "Hot Spring Shark Attack"
Inoue’s fondness for Spielberg helps, but the fondness is facilitated by the cheapness. Like many a crummy shark thriller, Hot Spring Shark Attack rocks a low budget and shabby production values. Unlike the overwhelming majority of its peers, though, the combination of Inoue’s nods to Jaws, cheesy effects, and palpable “let’s put on a show” energy lift the film into the territory of genuine goodness. Do sharks pop their noggins out of bodies of water—be they in onsens, or the ocean, or puddles sporadically formed on Atsumi’s streets—and whisper, “shaaaaaaaaaaark?” Yes. Do the sharks in this movie come equipped with a bioorganic EMP to foil the efforts of Japan’s Self-Defense Force to contain them? Yes. Is there a himbo character who aids Kose and Kanichi by punching sharks in the face? Yes. But Hot Spring Shark Attack’s tender, loving qualities parlay into what feels like one of cinema’s ultimate fan films, in the best way possible.