The Shallows
(2016) 86 Min.
Rated: PG-13 (Gore)
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Stars: Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
A woman who decides to surf at a secret beach in Mexico is attacked and stranded on a rock by a shark.
Synopsis:
Nancy (Lively) is a medical student who is escaping from her studies on a trip to Mexico. She is being driven to the location to a secret beach where she can find some nice waves and surf. Her friend on the trip is too busy hanging out with cute guys and getting drunk to keep tabs on Nancy and Carlos (Jaenada), the driver, refuses to give her the name of the beach.
They arrive at the beach and Carlos drops her off and asks her how she’s leaving. “Uber”, she replies. She thanks Carlos and he leaves. She suits up and meets two other local surfers, one with a GoPro on a helmet he’s wearing. They warn her about a little rock island nearby and that there’s stinging fire coral she should watch out for. Nancy and the other surfers surf for a few hours.
Nancy takes a break and rests on the beach. She does a video chat with her dad and her younger sister. She reveals that she’s at this beach because this is where her mother also surfed when she was pregnant with Nancy. Then she got cancer and died. Nancy feels like she “fought too hard” and it all ended the same.
Nancy surfs a bit more. The day is getting late and the two guys offer her a ride home, but she rejects it and decides to catch one last wave. The water is still now, though and nearby she discovers a festering whale carcass oozing oil and covered in seagulls. She suddenly gets knocked off her board and attacked on her leg by a shark. She manages to climb onto the whale carcass. As she’s on the whale, the shark rams the whale trying to get her.
Nancy flies off and swims to a nearby rock jutting out of the water. It’s a small island that is barely above the sea level and is only big enough to hold her body. There’s an injured seagull on the rock that she names Steven Seagull. Nancy slows the bleeding in her leg and sleeps the night on the rock.
Late at night a drunk man hears Nancy’s cries for help, but instead steals her phone, money and belongings left on the beach. He then tries to steal the surfboard in the water, but as he enters the water, the shark kills him.
The next morning the two local guys come back to surf and Nancy doesn’t notice them until they’re already in the water. She tries to yell at them, but it’s too late. The shark attacks and kills them both.
Nancy, after timing the shark as it circles, is able to get the GoPro helmet that one of the men wore. She records a video of herself asking for help. She tosses the helmet in the sea towards the beach and also places Steven Seagull on a surfboard raft headed to the beach. She makes an attempt to swim to a buoy nearby.
Underwater there are suddenly many jellyfish and Nancy uses it as a cover because shark will not follow her there. She makes it to the buoy just before the shark can reach her.
While on the buoy she is able to open a box containing a flare gun. She sees a far off ship and shoots two flares trying to attract it’s attention to no avail. She then shoots a flare at the shark, hitting it. The shark gets angry and starts ramming the buoy. The last flare is shot at the shark, which lights oil on the surface of the sea which the shark jumps through. The shark is on fire for a bit before getting back into the water.
The shark is even more angry now and starts to bite off metal bits of the buoy. Meanwhile, a kid on the beach has found the helmet, watched the GoPro footage and runs off for help.
Nancy is knocked off the buoy and straps herself to a heavy chain on the buoy that is pulled off. As the heavy chain collapses to the seafloor, Nancy is pulled down quickly. The shark, trying to keep up, starts to persue her. She moves out of the way quickly allowing the shark to impale itself on the rebar of the buoy’s anchor.
Nancy is swept away to the shore and Carlos is there to pull her from the sea. She coughs up seawater and sees Steven Seagull on the beach.
Fast forward a year later in Galveston, Texas. Nancy is about to surf with her little sister. She is now a doctor and her father remarks that her mother would be proud of her.
Review:
This film is beautifully shot. It has wonderful colors and the location is gorgeous. The pacing is good. Blake Lively does an okay job as far as acting goes, but that’s about all the praises I can give this film.
Why would anyone be as risky as Nancy? Why would anyone go to a secret beach without their vacation buddies? No one knows where you are, you have no ride to take you back. When the locals advise you to leave, you stay instead. And that’s just Nancy. That’s not even covering shark behavior. Sharks aren’t known as revenge animals that continuously ram themselves into object to knock loose prey. They aren’t known to let prey get stranded on a rock and wait around for days. I understand that Jaws took some liberties with shark behavior but The Shallows really does stretch the reality of it all.
There is an awful lot of CGI in this. The shark, for one, is pure CGI and it’s a bit obvious. This influences suspension of disbelief, too. There are also gratuitous Blake Lively boob and butt shots, which isn’t usually something I remark on, but it was fairly obvious that they felt a need to show off Lively’s body in a bikini.
The film tries to be a story about a cunning woman versus a menacing beast. It just isn’t very believable for me and seemed silly. I would recommend this film to people who just like shark attack films. Obviously there are better films out there, like Jaws. This is by no means as bad as an Asylum film. Effort was put into this film to attempt to make it believable, it just never came together and was kind of bad. I would say that this is a watchable film if the standard is “bad but entertaining”. If you can suspend disbelief and I mean REALLY suspend disbelief, then you might like this film.