Despite its potentially sensational subject matter, the HBO documentary After the Bite is not an official part of Shark Week. It’s a thoughtful and multifaceted documentary covering the proliferation of sharks off the Massachusetts coast, and the specific aftermath of a tragic 2018 shark-bite death that shocked and rattled a Cape Cod beach town.
Director Ivy Meeropol is aware that her movie has been positioned as (quite literally) Shark Week adjacent. “It’s kind of like a bait and switch,” she admitted. “I’m drawing people in who just are interested in sharks … and maybe they’ll get swept up in the story and find themselves thinking, wow, there’s something a lot scarier than sharks.” Even as broader issues like us-versus-them resistance to science and climate crisis loom in the background, the movie doesn’t indulge in scaremongering. Instead, it performs a delicate balancing act, acknowledging that there have been more sharks closer to Cape Cod shores in recent years while not giving in to the kind of panic that has informed public perception of sharks since Jaws became an all-time smash hit.
