Review: The Shallows

Her name is Nancy and here is what we know. She's from Galveston, Texas. She's dropped out of med school, frustrated over not being able to do anything to prevent the death of her cancer-stricken mother. She has a little sister. She has a father who urges her not to quit, to keep fighting. She's in Mexico on her mother's favourite beach - partly as pilgrimage, partly to recalibrate and reconsider. She has a cellphone which she's left on the beach along with some clothes and her backpack. She's in the water, on her surfboard, not too far from shore. She meets two local surfers, they bond over the waves. Hours later, they bid her farewell. She stays behind to catch one last wave.

Something's not quite right. She looks around. Moments later, two dolphins leap out of the water. Delighted, she follows them only to be led to a whale carcass being encircled by a flock of seagulls. Then a wave approaches. She catches it, and a shark catches her board. She's pulled down into the water, her body bumping against the rocks, trickles of blood trailing her blonde tresses. She screams and suddenly she's in a cloud of her own blood. She scrambles atop the whale carcass and, when the shark circles back, leaps off and makes her way to a nearby rock.

And there she is. With a nasty gash on her leg. On a rock. 200 yards from shore. There's a buoy nearby, it might be a touch too far. The shark is still in the water. And the high tide is approaching.

The Shallows starring Blake Lively as the blonde in peril is written by Anthony Jaswinski and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. It's a B-movie par excellence. Collet-Serra doesn't skimp on the cheap thrills - Lively strips down to her bikini after tearing off her wetsuit to use as a tourniquet; three men become appetizers for the shark who is intent on having Nancy for its main course - but he also displays a surprising amount of restraint. That may stem from budgetary constraints (the film was made for a relatively paltry $17 million), but it nonetheless results in many effectively staged sequences. One of the shark's victims, a local drunk - who steals Nancy's belongings instead of helping her - wades out to retrieve her surfboard despite her warning screams. Collet-Serra holds the camera on Lively's face, anguished and conveying everything we need to know about the man's fate, before cutting to the man crawling onto the shore, the lower half of him gone. A scene in which Nancy swims through a field of glowing jellyfish to slow down the shark is surreal in its loveliness.

Much of the film is focused on Nancy's time on that rock as she tries to figure out how to survive. Jaswinski provides some levity in the form of a wounded seagull, whose presence and reaction shots are utterly delightful. One could take the seagull as Nancy's mother watching over her and there are several touches that would bolster that view, but the filmmakers wisely don't hammer home the point too strongly. Instead, Collet-Serra and cinematographer Flavio Martínez Labiano offer stunning visuals and a variety of angles to imprint the geography and to highlight the immediate danger faced by our heroine. The finale is pulse-pounding as Nancy fends off the great white, attempting to protect herself within the ever more narrow confines of the metal buoy. Lively throws herself into the role, and it's no small credit on her part that she manages to anchor the film, exude both grit and vulnerability, and maintain her dignity under the camera's scrutiny.

The Shallows

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

Written by: Anthony Jaswinski

Starring: Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge