‘The Shallows’ Review | Surf Trek Into Sharkness

Over the course of motion picture history, we’ve seen a shark fight a zombie, a shark fight a giant octopus, a shark fight the thinly veiled stand-ins for the cast of The Jersey Shore, a shark fight a crocosaurus, a shark fight a mechashark and a shark fight Gamera the turtle monster. So Blake Lively doesn’t seem like all that much of a threat, but filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra more or less makes it work in his new thriller The Shallows. 

Lively plays a surfer who travels to an isolated beach. She accidentally pisses off a great white shark and winds up wounded and stranded on a small rock for several days while the shark keeps circling… and circling… and circling…

It’s a simple premise that, rather predictably, turns out to be a rather simple movie. Blake Lively tries something clever but it doesn’t quite work. It looks like someone might be able to help her but then they get eaten by the shark. Blake Lively questions the futility of her existence. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the badass shark-fightin’ climax.

Columbia Pictures

There’s no denying that The Shallows whiles away a summer afternoon as effectively as any b-movie thriller. Blake Lively carries the whole movie more-or-less by herself (well, a seagull helps for while), and she convincingly plays out one physically torturous situation after another. Meanwhile, Jaume Collet-Serra films the whole thing with the sort of gorgeous cinematography that’s usually only reserved for a Terrence Malick movie. The Shallows gives off the weird impression that it’s one of those surfing montage videos they play at Islands restaurants, but on steroids and with a killer shark in it. And that’s a strange selling point, but a selling point nonetheless.

The Shallows would have worked just fine as a low-concept killer shark movie, but the film’s screenplay throws in a sort of Diet Gravity theme about the importance of persevering, even the face of certain doom. It never quite has the same emotional impact as Gravity Classic but it doesn’t feel false either, and in a film that mostly consists of a beautiful woman in a swimsuit trying not to get eaten by a giant fish, I think they deserve a few points for trying to add something thoughtful and human.

There are better killer shark movies than The Shallows (and there are killer shark movies that are gloriously worse), but Jaume Collet-Serra’s film is toothsome enough to be worth watching. It might not be safe to go back in the ocean, but in the theater, the water’s just fine.

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Top Photo: Columbia Pictures

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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