The Shallows

Just in time to make you second guess that tropical surf vacation you might be planning, here comes The Shallows, a sparse but mostly effective thriller that gets some mileage out of the simplest of storytelling devices.  The movie exists mostly on a rock 200 yards off of a Mexican beach.  On said rock is our heroine, a woman who was bitten by a great white shark while surfing, and is now stranded on said rock, trying to find a way to get back to the beach, as the shark ominously circles around her as it waits for her to get back in the water.

As a basic survival story, it works well enough, and Blake Lively is able to inject some life in her performance as Nancy, the woman who finds herself in this predicament.  All we really learn about Nancy is that she's on vacation, and that she has picked this particular beach because her mom (who has since passed away for reasons the movie doesn't make clear) was on this beach when she found out she was pregnant with Nancy.  We also learn that she has dropped out of medical school, and through a Skype conversation with her little sister and father, we find out daddy's obviously not happy about this.  After the conversation, Nancy goes out to sea, and that's when the shark comes in.  It eats three other people during the course of the film (two fellow surfers, and a drunk who fell asleep on the beach who unwisely decides to wade into the water), but it just keeps on going back for Nancy, even though there's a massive whale carcass floating nearby.  The movie tries to create a Moby Dick-style plot of man vs. nature, and while it is mostly effective, it does get stretched a little thin, even with a running time that just barely hits 90 minutes.

This is essentially a one-woman show, as Lively is required to carry the entire movie totally alone.  Her only companion for most of the film is an injured bird who is perched on the rock with her.  Other times, Lively has to talk to herself as she performs emergency surgery to fix her wounds, or when she tries to determine how much time she has to swim to buoy before the shark gets to where she is.  What's nice is that the filmmakers never once make Nancy into a victim.  Yes, she has her moments where she starts to lose hope, but there is still some form of determination, even in her lowest moments.  She is resourceful, and she never panics so much that she loses sight of her goal of survival.  She is fleshed out just enough, given the film's sparse (and that's being generous) narrative, so that we can support her.  Sure, the camera may linger on her body and her wetsuit for a little longer than necessary at times, but she always remains a likable heroine.

Where The Shallows falls apart just a little is during the climax, where Nancy must take on the shark head-on.  What has been a tight and suspenseful little thriller suddenly turns into a full-blown action film, with an obviously CG shark being set on fire, and turning into a relentless slasher from a horror movie.  I was expecting an action climax actually, but this movie goes just a little over the top.  It's not enough to ruin the effectiveness of everything that came before, but I do kind of wish that the filmmakers had kept up the realistic approach that they had been using for the majority of the film.  The Shallows works so much better as a survival story, rather than an action thriller, is what I'm trying to say.  And since the action doesn't come until the third act, the movie mostly works.

Will this be scary enough to make audiences second guess going into the water this summer?  Probably not.  But, it might make them at least dip their toe in first before they dive in.  There are plenty of moments of heart-pounding tension here, and while you may laugh about it when it's over, it grabs your attention while it plays out.

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