How Jaws and Zodiac turn the freedom of July 4th into a nightmare

Following the success of his first hit, Se7en, director David Fincher talked to Empire about the lasting effect of one of his favorite movies, Jaws. “I don’t know how much movies should entertain,” he said in 1996. “To me, I’m always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about Jaws is the fact that I’ve never gone swimming in the ocean again.” We can neither confirm nor deny whether Fincher has spent the rest of his life on dry land, but Jaws certainly left its mark on Fincher. A decade later, when Fincher needed to stage Zodiac’s introductory Independence Day murder, he channeled the scars Spielberg left.

Both Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws and Fincher’s 2007 thriller Zodiac weaponize the quiet stillness of summer nights, pushing us into a familiar world and disarming us with nostalgia. With their cameras gliding through suburban block parties and awkward sandy dunes, playing on our collective memories of summer, Fincher and Spielberg create thematically linked dream worlds that feel as real as a Beach Boys song, before betraying the viewer with the sudden burst of violence. Two youthful romances dashed by primal hunters who use the allure of summer romance to trap their victims.

The opening sequences of Jaws and Zodiac have many superficial connections. Both follow a boy and girl absconding on a summer fling, and in true slasher fashion, the sex-seeking female dies. Though they occur on opposite coasts, the setting is similar, with the San Fransisco suburbs matching the Independence Day magic of the fictional Amity Island’s New England beaches. There’s a sense of security in these places. The kids of Jaws stay out all night drinking but know that come morning, their parents will drive them to the train station so they can return to college. Their freedom is encouraged by a summer free of responsibility.

Spielberg and Fincher use that sense of security to their advantage. In Jaws, despite opening the film with shark vision, by the time we get to the bonfire we’ve largely forgotten about that. The camera loses itself in the crowd, panning through the party, landing on a boy making eyes at a girl. It’s the setup for a typical teen romance, the way star-crossed lovers Tom (Jonathan Filley) and Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) connect without speaking before the sudden call of the sea sends Chrissie running and stripping toward the water. We’re locked into his perspective and pursuit as she makes a break for it, tempting him to follow. “We’re going swimming,” she yells. Zodiac pulls a similar trick.

Like Chrissie and Tom, we don’t learn much about Darlene (Ciara Moriarty) and Michael (Lee Noris), the Zodiac’s first victims based on real people. In the midst of an affair, their nervousness punctures the atmosphere. But this isn’t an erotic thriller. The opening shots create dramatic irony, as Jaws does, between the freedom of summer and the danger the audience awaits. As Fincher ruminates on the carefree suburban block parties and backyard barbecues, where other couples can be seen walking off into the night together, Darlene and Mike’s sense of unease lingers. “Are you coming?” Darlene asks.

Zodiac plays on the touchstones of the perfect summer night—at least the ideal summer night in the ’60s and ’70s. Darlene takes Michael to the drive-in and then a parking lot for some much-needed necking. In both Jaws and Zodiac, the movies alert the viewer that something sinister awaits. Jaws gets this out of the way via the shark vision POV shots of the opening credits; Zodiac by the nervousness of its leads, who jump when they hear the pop of Fourth of July firecrackers. Afterward, they laugh. It’s all in their head.

The acute sense of unease that permeates what should be the perfect summer evening crescendos into a terrifying display of violence. Whether with a gun or titular teeth, the perpetrators are cold, unforgiving killers whose motives are presented as primal, instinctual, and matter-of-fact. Though the films are named after the threat, the directors never let you forget the victims, focusing entirely on their perspective throughout the attacks and never showing the killer. Both films end their opening sequences with an epilogue: A lone survivor traumatized by the experience.

These two movies present real-world horrors through a dreamy haze of memory, distilling the iconography and atmosphere of early summer into violent, terrifying cold open on a hot night. In this way, Spielberg and Fincher disarm us, setting the stage not for a summer dream but a nightmare.