| The Shallows (2016) | |
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Rating: 6.3/10 (142,698 votes) Director: Jaume Collet-Serra Writer: Anthony Jaswinski Stars: Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Angelo Josue Lozano Corzo Runtime: 86 min Rated: PG-13 Genre: Action, Drama, Horror Released: 24 Jun 2016 |
| Plot: A mere 200 yards from shore, surfer Nancy is attacked by a great white shark, with her short journey to safety becoming the ultimate contest of wills. | |
Director Jaume Collet-Serra may have a bit of a dodgy track record through the years, but don’t let the name put you off here. A far cry from his awful remake of House of Wax back in 2005, and a very different animal to the more recent glut of Liam Neeson films (Unknown, Non-Stop, and Run All Night), The Shallows has been compared by many to the seminal shark movie, Jaws, but to do so would be a disservice to how intense The Shallows actually is.
The set up is as simple as it gets. After the death of her mother, medical student Nancy (Blake Lively) sets off to surf on a secluded beach that her mother surfed at after finding out she was pregnant with Nancy. Surfing for several hours with two local residents, Nancy sticks around to clear her head after the other two leave. However, when she spots the carcass of a humpback whale, she becomes unnerved, and swiftly discovers that she has entered the feeding ground of a great white shark. Unable to get to shore, she finds herself wounded and isolated on a small isolated rock. With time working against her, can she survive the encounter?
As mentioned, comparisons with Jaws don’t do the film any favours. If you imagine the final moments of Jaws, one man versus a great white shark, and extrapolate that tension and build up over around 70 minutes (taking off the brief set-up at the start), and that is pretty much the only comparison that can be made. This is a one-character film for all intents and purposes, and Lively excels in the spotlight. Doing a lot of her own stunts (and injuring herself in the process), Lively sells the emotion and the action equally, and it is easy to latch onto her and start to worry for her as the film progresses. A smattering of support cast dart briefly into the film, some (as you would expect) as victims of the shark, but the focus is never on them. Indeed, one such victim is mauled, and we are not witnesses to it, instead we are shown Nancy’s reaction to it, lingering on her face for the whole of the attack, seeing the despair, sorrow, and sickened reactions. Moments such as this ensure we care for Nancy, and the rest of the film afterwards is nail biting, edge of the seat stuff.
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Camerawork on the film is majestic from start to finish. The early parts of the film really take in the beauty of the location, and a line of dialogue highlights how beautiful the area is when Nancy’s driver tells her to stop looking at pictures and look at the reality instead. The long shots of the beach and waters let us, the audience, bask in the grandeur of the location. As the film progresses, the camerawork gets tighter, isolating us on that rock with Nancy, making us stop seeing the beauty and only seeing the danger, and by the end of the film the dusk and cloudy skies are closing in, making the whole scene look horrific instead. This skill in using the location to convey the drama really elevates the film.
As for the shark itself, a completely CGI creation (surprising for Collet-Serra who normally opts for practical effects), it is a fantastically designed beast, and the CGI is excellently rendered. Some moments look extremely convincingly real, and there is never a moment where if fails to look terrifying in its bulk.
The Shallows may not bring anything particularly new to the table, but what it does bring it serves on the best silverware. There are a few moments which may be a struggle for the more squeamish of viewer (Nancy is a medical student, so doesn’t shy away from tackling her wounds), but on the whole the film is a tension filled battle between woman and beast, and proof that it is still possible to make a scary shark film, and with no tornado in sight.
