Remember that first teaser trailer for The Shallows? The one that shows Blake Lively stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean as the high tide starts to spill over the surface and a gigantic great white shark swims slowly by, not five feet away? It was under two minutes, it offered little information, and it was very impressive. I had my doubts about Blake Lively carrying a one woman show by herself, but after seeing that trailer, I had a feeling that The Shallows might be the next great killer shark movie. I was wrong.
In the movie, a surfer named Nancy (Blake Lively) travels to a secret beach and inadvertently puts herself right in the heart of a great white’s feeding zone, and miles away from anyone who can help her. Apparently, the reason why Nancy has travelled to this beach in particular is because her mother surfed here years ago, long before the cancer set in and took her away. Nancy’s hoping to find some sort of connection with her mom out here, even if it just means staring at the same shoreline that her late loved one saw back when things were good and simple. Sadly, for Nancy, something far more sinister is waiting for her in those waters, and it’s ready and willing to drag her down into the depths of despair.
It’s a bold choice that director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, House of Wax) has made here, to make a killer shark movie with a Cast Away meets Open Water angle, and choosing to have a lady lead the usual one-man show. (It’s also a bold choice to move his film up a week and let it go head to head with Independence Day: Resurgence at the box office, and I have to admit I respect him for that.) However, though it may be an interesting decision, it also inevitably means putting the fate of a filmmaker’s entire project in the hands of a single actor, and hoping that he or she can carry that weight and connect with the audience. Blake Lively is decent enough to make The Shallows an entertaining summer movie, but if her character Nancy were played by someone a bit more versatile, the emotional beats might have hit just as hard as the over-the-top moments of insanity.
From the beginning, it’s clear that this movie is going to be a bit ridiculous. From the giant floating text message boxes that literally pop up on the screen next to Nancy’s face as she texts her hung over roommate back at the hotel, to the whale that Nancy climbs on top of to initially avoid the shark, to the bird she aptly names “Steven Seagull” who keeps her company on her lonely rock, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that The Shallows is a pretty perfect name for a movie like this one. However, if you can swallow the cheese, there’s actually a few intense moments scattered throughout the film that make this a fun little movie to watch with friends as you duck into a nearby theater to escape from the summer heat.
It’s just strange that Collet-Serra would even bother throwing in the melodramatic tidbits about Nancy’s family in the first place. Since her mother died, Nancy has taken off on a vacation hundreds of miles away from her worried sister and father and is considering dropping out of med school, despite the fact that she’s very gifted. The movie tries to convince its viewers that its lead character is a smart girl, but all she winds up being is golden hued eye candy filmed from every possible sultry angle. Even when it comes to Nancy’s mother, the audience knows that she has died from cancer, but the timeline and the type of cancer seem like they were never even mentioned, or if they were, it was so brief that it doesn’t seem to matter much to the storyteller. All of this isn’t necessarily offensive, it’s just confusing. It seems like even the director doesn’t know what he wants.
On the plus side, The Shallows has its effective moments of high tension, and it also features some terrific sound design, specifically in the seconds when Nancy is first attacked by the shark. It’s also pretty admirable how much blood and gore Collet-Serra got away with in this PG-13 rated film, and how he found a way to avoid creating absurd explanations for why the characters in his shark movie keep getting back into the water. However, the overabundance of technology, the ludicrous logic and the the tacked on cheesy family trauma refuse to let this movie be anything other than an exciting popcorn flick.
In the end, The Shallows is not the next great killer shark movie, which I find a little disappointing, but who cares? It’s good bloody summer fun at the movies, and as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, go ahead and treat yourself to some summertime carnage, courtesy of Collet-Serra and crew.
The Shallows hits theaters everywhere on June 24th, 2016.
