Movie Review: The Shallows

2.5 stars out of 5

This was written by a guy named Anthony Jaswinski, and you have to wonder if he was nicknamed “Jaws” as a kid. And if so, did he start to daydream, “I’d like to make a shark movie someday….” Me, I’m not real big on shark flicks, or shark weeks, or sharknados. (Though, full disclosure, I did maybe sorta write a book on the topic.) Movie-wise, it begins and ends with the classic Jaws, right?

Ah, but this is also a surfing movie. Well, coincidentally, I’m not into those either. Also, I wasn’t 100% sure who the star Blake Lively was. I do know she’s been a famous pretty person for a while, and I think we used to mention her in the kids’ magazines I worked on. But, it was a lazy $6 day at the theater up the street, so The Shallows seemed liked a mindless way to kill 90 minutes in the air conditioning. Surfing + shark + pretty person? Hey, why not.

The movie begins with one of those Ominous Foreshadowing Scenes. But after that it’s all sunshine and gorgeous scenery as Nancy (Lively) catches a ride to a secret secluded beach in Mexico. She’s also working the smartphone and, bummer, her friend back at the hotel has a wicked hangover and probably won’t be joining her. Which is really OK, as it turns out this is sort of a “vision quest” for Nancy, to the beach her dead mom visited just before Nancy was born. And in a tense call with dad, we learn she’s also taking unexpected time off from med school. Nancy is finding herself, yo.

At the beach, there are gratuitous pretty-girl-in-bikini and then pretty-girl-in-bikini-squeezes-into-a-wetsuit-top sequences. But soon, Nancy is hanging ten — and by god she’s good! She even impresses the two initially skeptical Mexican surfer dudes who are also out there. As they day grows late, the guys start to head back, recommending that Nancy do the same. No, she wants to ride in just one more wave.

Hands up if you think that was a bad decision.

Supporting her choice wholeheartedly is a great white shark. A nasty, powerful, incredibly persistent shark. And it’s then that the movie enters Woman vs. Shark mode. Now, maybe Blake Lively isn’t the world’s most believable med student, but I did buy her as someone tossed into a survivor situation who becomes MacGyver on a Rock. I was very pleased she didn’t spend the rest of the film shrieking and flailing. This is the movie’s strength: It opts for slow-building tension instead of sudden jolts. In fact, when it tries for “jump out of your seat” moments, the film generally, uh, flounders. The genuinely most surprising thing was in the closing credits, when I saw that the movie was filmed in Australia, not Mexico. Nice fakeout with director Jaume Collet-Serra; he’s Spanish, not Mexican!

Please don’t let me give you the false impression that this is a really good movie; it’s not. But it is pretty entertaining, decently shot, and not overly exploitative. Things only get really stupid fairly late in the film, knocking my rating down half a star. See, I’m less shallow than you thought.