An amateur surfer fights for dear life after being attacked by a shark off the shore of a secret beach her mother used to frequent...
Film: The Shallows
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen
What's it about:
Quite simply put, Nancy (Lively), an amateur surfer fights for dear life after being attacked by a shark off the shore of a secret beach her mother used to frequent. She does a 127 Hours (well, everything short of drinking her own pee and amputating herself, really), while the hours tick away, with only a seagull for moral support. It doesn't help that nobody knows where she is. Well... except the guy who drove her there.
What's hot:
Blake Lively is the sort of protagonist one doesn't expect to be in such situations. So, that's some out-of-the-box casting right there. Plus, she's eye candy. And coming off The Age Of Adaline, she's in a different space altogether here. You flinch when she flinches, you cringe when she does, and that's the mark of a really relatable actor, despite the total air of elegance about her. It's cute to see her struggling with her Spanish (she's somewhere in Mexico, throughout the movie) and her personal problems (because she seems always so measured with her screen emotions), while she navigates a tourniquet almost. And that smile could light up a dreary day.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra and writer Anthony Jaswinski keep you involved in the proceedings throughout. While it bothers you that there is very little conflict in the first half of this rather short film (by today's standards), it actually works to the film's advantage. It creates a rather ironic claustrophobic feeling of dread, especially if you consider she's just 200 yards from shore but can do nothing but fight (as opposed to taking flight).
Marco Beltrami's score is competent and understated. Editing (Joel Negron) and the SFX and VFX teams are efficient and get the job done. But the hero of the piece here is undoubtedly cinematographer Flavio Martínez Labiano for some wonderful close, panoramic, underwater as well as action shots. The post-production and DI teams deserve top marks for making this a visual spectacle as well.
What's not:
Argue as much as you want about how Nancy kept her head about her shoulders even as she escaped becoming shark food, it's clearly unclear how she escapes a killer shark when a whale and two other surfers had no such luck. The movie seems too content working within the script's restrictions. At times, it behaves like a showreel for Lively.
What to do:
I cannot emphasise enough how beautiful (and dangerous) this film and its leading lady look. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and rocky waters to say this: give Blake a standalone superhero movie already. God knows, she deserves it. Dive headlong into this one, killer sharks, notwithstanding. But hey, Jaws, it ain't!
Rating: ***
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 "Hollywood, Film Review, Shallows Review, Blake Lively, Jaume Collet-Serra, Nancy, Adaline, Anthony Jaswinski, Brett Cullen, Marc")
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