Heartbreak and horror: eight of the best subversive beach scenes

Forget the Beach Boys, the most memorable depictions of the beach are strange and unsettling. Our writers head to the shore’s dark side

The soft, sandy beaches that receive star billing in Baywatch, the songs of the Beach Boys and Harry Styles’s incandescently smug Watermelon Sugar video are as misleading as they are idyllic. Since Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr had their iconic beach-side bunk-up in 1953’s From Here to Eternity, one of the most familiar themes in pop culture is that of a sexy seaside paradise populated by the young, good-looking and impervious to sunburn. Lorde’s lavish Solar Power is the latest to sell that same dream, as the returning pop star prances over sand dunes in yellow silk (without a single sweat stain!) flanked by toned pals freshly out of a Timotei ad.

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