The elevator pitch for the shallows is obvious: Jaws with a super hot girl. I was very skeptical that Blake Lively could be the “hot girl” since her resume didn’t suggest she could carry a movie by herself. However, y’all can rest easy: The Shallows is a tense, tight affair that reminds us how scary and lethal sharks can be. Summer at the beach, am I right?
Nancy (Lively) finds the beach that her sick mother visited when she was pregnant with Nancy. While delaying her medical career and honoring her mother simultaneously, Nancy goes surfing on this secluded beach, and gets attacked by a shark and stranded on a rock very close to shore, but not close enough to avoid getting eaten. She then must find a way off the rock and away from the shark before high tide returns and forces her off the rock. Also there’s a seagull that’s adorable.
The director of The Shallows is Jaume Collet-Serra, who has done a couple non-Taken Liam Neeson movies, and Orphan, which is a sneakily good horror movie. The director is well versed at getting to the nitty gritty when it comes to a thriller. He spends less than 15 minutes setting up Nancy’s character, motivation to fight the shark, and personal experience to do the stuff she needs to do the survive the shark. Serra also uses great directing techniques to make each shark attack different. The waves provide ominous intermittent loss of visual on people who may be attacked, which is used to great effect. GoPro’s give a few great jump scares. And the big final battle has just a terrific ending. The Shallows gets you right to the point, and delivers on exactly what you want it to: copious scares and shark attacks quickly and then it ends.
I cannot believe Blake Lively carried this film by herself. I was pretty sure, based on the multitude of the director’s butt shots, that she was mostly cast because of her physical assets, which certainly doesn’t hurt (that bikini is boss). But she acquits herself better than I expected. Lively talks to herself a lot in cute simple ways, like when she is quoting her med school classes when she is fixing herself. She has a solid relationship with a seagull that goes a long way in making us root for her. Lively needs some work on emotional resonance; I cringed watching her talk to her family, but those scenes are mostly kept to a minimum. When the movie keeps her acting mechanical and plot-focused (which this movie mostly does), The Shallows succeeds.
Jaume Collet-Serra has heard you shark attack fans. We’ll do some cool shark attacks, have a beautiful woman in a bikini, and involve a gun in some way. The Shallows delivers the goods, and then let’s you go quickly on your way. I also will see Blake Lively, the Seagull Whisperer, TV show whenever they decide to make that film.