Written by Mr. Mouseburger 20th Jan 2008

Kindly submitted by SharkFemme

Marge is one of the teenagers stalked and menaced by the shark in the latter half of the film. She is a minor character with little screen time, but she is presented as a “motherly” figure to Sean Brody, looking after him while the kids are at sea. Ultimately, she gets eaten by the shark, sacrificing her life to save him.

After the shark attacks the helicopter and presumably eats the pilot, it rushes the damaged boats full of teens, separating them and sending Sean into the water. Marge is the only person who jumps in to help him. As the other kids urge her to hurry up and get out of the water, she pushes Sean on top of an overturned sailboat to relative safety and then tries to get up herself. The wet surface is slippery and she can’t get a grip on it. Her face contorts with fear as she struggles frantically and exclaims, “Will you pull me? I can’t get up!” She manages to get her hands on top of the boat, but then slides back down into the water. Her voice breaks, and she seems to realize that she is about to get eaten.

The shark swims toward the surface with its mouth open. It breaches, rising higher and higher out of the water behind Marge, who is flailing helplessly against the side of the sailboat. It’s a massive, powerful creature that quickly and easily engulfs the much smaller girl, taking her into its huge maw. Viewed entirely from behind, the shark’s body convulses, its nose pitches down, and it bites hard into Marge with a nasty crunch, crushing her bones while the other kids—especially Jackie—scream hysterically. All we see of Marge at this point is her flailing right arm.

The shark twists to the right and stays on the surface for a few moments. Its nose twitches again—a second bite into the poor girl, resulting in another bone-crushing crunch. It seems unclear whether the shark bit into her from the head down or took her all the way inside its mouth feet first and swallowed her whole after munching her, but, in either case, she gets eaten and pulled below the surface as the shark slides back down into the water and disappears. All of this occurs with a brutal swiftness right before Sean’s eyes.

The scene is bloodless, and there are no shots of Marge struggling in the shark’s mouth or teeth stabbing into her, but it’s an effective attack because, to picture her getting eaten, the viewer has to combine imagination with the screams, crunches, and visuals presented.

Seeing Marge being devoured was a bit sad and cruel in the sense that she was a caring, sympathetic, and heroic character who sacrificed herself to rescue Sean. Earlier in the film, in what might be interpreted as an ominous foreshadowing of her fatal encounter, the shark bumps the overturned sailboat with a frightened Sean and Marge perched on top. “I’ll be back!”