Sony Pictures
Shark movies are a cyclical thing. Apex was the first Jaws of course but there are many nadirs, probably one of the many Sharknado ripoffs. But the fascination with them is ever present; every year the few attacks are international news, and that’s only more so with the ease of recording everything. A GoPro camera is featured heavily in this movie, but it’s the sort of product placement that actually makes sense. But you probably know what this is going in.
The Shallows is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (known for a few Liam Neeson silly action movies mainly) and stars Blake Lively as Nancy, a bikini-clad surfer with a history and a future. Nancy is in Mexico searching for a specific beach, one where her mom once visited while pregnant with her. With a combination of efficient and clunky exposition, we learn the backstory: Nancy dropped out of med school after her mother died of cancer. And now she’s looking to reconnect or whatever.
The thriller aspect of the movie starts after some beautiful shots of the ocean as the score and underwater camera shots begin to increase the tension. After all, we know what this movie is all about. And then Nancy is attacked by a shark, badly injured on her thigh. From that point forward it’s a series of classic “up and down” tension moments as Nancy fights to stay alive. There are a few other deaths that are either intense or silly.
The movie likes to play it both ways, keeping it tight on Blake Lively’s face as she emotes and screams in agony. Yet it also lovingly pans over her body and rear repeatedly in a way that is disturbing when it also lingers on her serious injuries. This is where the movie dips into that sort of fetishistic imagery combining sexuality with horror. The scenes with the shark start minimally and work effectively then, but as the movie moves on the scenes get increasingly ridiculous until the finale is just absurd.
Along the negative side, the movie gets clunky during those exposition moments; it’s something unneeded at best and at worst, makes it harder to care about the protagonist. Many of the lines given to Nancy are simply too unrealistic and elicited laughs at the screening I was at. But on the plus side, dialogue aside, Blake Lively really does do great work at the center of this movie. She’s on the screen more than anything other than beautiful, epic shots of nature.
In a weird way, those shots are almost too good; so good that it makes the rest of the movie suffer in comparison. The “plot” is simple enough, it’s about survival with a bunch of scares and close calls, failures and mild successes, as we get close to the resolution. It’s a shark movie, so people die. But it’s also a PG-13 shark movie, which is weird, because the level of gore and violence acceptable seems odd to me; you have Blake Lively spout literally two words of profanity but pools of bloody water are omnipresent. Not to mention some very close up shots of bloody wounds.
Overall, I sort of liked the movie, but it wasn’t horrific enough to really stand out nor badly made enough to be completely forgettable. The shark may not always look realistic, but the nature shots are gorgeous and Blake Lively does some star work here. And there are many shots of her in a bikini if that does it for you, but “bloody and wounded Blake Lively” is a fetish I don’t want to know about.
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