For at least a century, sharks have been the subject of human fear and intrigue. At their best, they fascinate the curious mind each year on the Discovery Channel's Shark Week marathon. At their worst, they fill the nightmares that have brought us iconic movies such as 1975's "Jaws" . Both sides of this dichotomy make sharks a relevant topic of discussion, even for those of us who live nowhere near its natural habitat— the sea.

The anxiety surrounding sharks is not entirely unfounded, even though they are largely nonthreatening to humans. July marks the centennial of the New Jersey shark attacks that resulted in the deaths of five people in the summer of 1916. Although fear of sharks likely predates any singular event— they are, after all, the preeminent predator of the sea— the confusion and paranoia surrounding the New Jersey attacks signaled a change in the American attitude toward sharks. Shark attacks were no longer reserved for the deep parts of the ocean where sharks usually dwell— the New Jersey shark attacks occurred in Matawan Creek, not on the coastline and not at sea. While it forced scientists to re-examine what they knew about the behavior of sharks, it also forced all who had heard the story to reevaluate their fear of sharks and the water.

It's no surprise that Hollywood has exploited this scar on the American psyche. The New Jersey shark attacks inspired the novel "Jaws" by Peter Benchley, which then became director Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic the following year. Since the release of "Jaws," there has been an onslaught of films depicting the same formula: great white shark single-mindedly hunting unwitting humans, battle ensues, humans ultimately win.

The fascination with survival filmswith a threatening shark may stem from the catharsis that comes with having a fear realized and then resolved when the film is over. Other films have capitalized on this fear by adding new elements. "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), for instance, borrows a page from author Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" novel by taking the "shark-hunt-man" formula with a genetically engineered twist: scientists engineered sharks with bigger brains, thus making them smarter and much better at hunting humans.

"Open Water" (2003) has a different but perhaps more horrifying interpretation of the movie trope by taking a couple and stranding them in the middle of the ocean. If dealing with hunger, dehydration and exhaustion wasn't enough, they also happen to be adrift in shark-infested waters. Unlike "Deep Blue Sea" and more like "Jaws," "Open Water" takes a page from reality rather than fiction: the movie is loosely based on the true story of a couple who was left stranded in the Great Barrier Reef after their scuba diving group failed to take an accurate headcount.

Survival films rely on the premise that viewers will ask themselves, "What if that was me? What if this happened to me?" Man-versus-shark is just a variation of the man-versus-nature conflict that is so common to the survival genre. In "Cast Away" (2000), we struggle to even comprehend the terror of not only having to survive on an island, but the terror of being completely and utterly alone. We got a similar twinge of horror, if only briefly, in "The Martian" (2015), as a man fights to survive in an environment that is literally uninhabitable by humans.

In the latest shark flick, "The Shallows" (2016), Blake Lively's character is similarly alone and forced to outsmart the ocean's deadliest predator. Are these scenarios likely? No, but the non-romantic, nontrivial shark film reminds us that we are as subject to the natural order as sharks are. It's interesting, and cathartic, to contemplate where exactly in the natural order we belong.