The Shallows (2016)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
While surfing on a secluded beach, Nancy finds herself in the feeding grounds of a great white shark. Though stranded only 200 yards from shore, survival proves to be the ultimate test of wills, requiring all of her ingenuity, resourcefulness, and fortitude.
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30 films that influenced The Shallows
What critics say influenced The Shallows
Not “Jaws” (a much better film); not even the R-rated “Deep Blue Sea” (a much funnier film).
This week that arrives in the form of "The Shallows," a thriller that's part "Jaws" and part "The Raft" sequence from "Creepshow 2." Like that latter short that featured characters stuck on a platform in the middle of a lake where they could see the shore but didn't dare try to swim there due to something in the water between them and there, this one features Blake Lively as a surfer who ends up surviving an initial shark attack, only to end up on a rocky outcrop and then nearby buoy where she can see the safety of shore but just can't get there without being eaten.
2016 is the 50th anniversary of the heart-pounding “Jaws,” that gave us the famous line, “You need a bigger boat.”
In the tradition of Jaws, Collet-Serra begins with a shark attack before retreating to teases and false alarms for a while.
There's a long history of shark thrillers, and you can't get a much better blueprint (or movie) than Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic "Jaws."
It helps, of course, that the film has done something almost unthinkable in the four long decades of increasingly kitschy shark-attack movies since Spielberg’s Jaws — namely, that it has taken itself, and its premise, seriously.
Spielberg’s “Jaws” remains the benchmark of the effective thrillers about oceanic predators, but nearly all that have come after have gone beyond mere inferiority: many are just downright insulting, including a string of terrible sequels and a generation of ridiculous made-for-television “Sharknado” films (only Renny Harlin’s “Deep Blue Sea” was ever worth mentioning).
If you’re in the right mood, though, it’s a ridiculous, eye-rolling hoot: A sub-90 minute, check-your-brain-at-the-ticket-window diversion not unlike 1997’s Deep Blue Sea (minus the show-stopping Samuel L. Jackson death scene).
Deep Blue Sea, Kon-Tiki, Dinoshark, Soul Surfer, Sharknados 1-3 (with the fourth installment, Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens, planned for release in late July), and the many, many other films in the Jaws genre … all of them summon the fear that sharks are not just predators, but also—much more than other powerful animals manage to be—monsters.
The Great White stars of the Jawsiad quickly ceased to resemble any beasts found in nature — they were bringing down helicopters as early as 1978's Jaws 2. But even Jaws: The Revenge ("This time, it's personal") looks like Gorillas in the Mist compared to the 21st century made-for-Syfy-shark-portmanteau plague, which asserts that camp is a thing you can engineer the way the scientists in 1999's Deep Blue Sea engineered sharks with ape-level intelligence.
Unequivocally the best shark movie since “Jaws” (yes, even better than “Open Water” and “Deep Blue Sea”), this back-to-basics thriller either eliminates or reclaims all of the excess and gimmickry that have watered down the genre since Steven Spielberg first invented it — there’s only one killer fish, she’s shot in beautiful 2D, and it doesn’t appear as though the beast has developed the ability to swim backwards as the result of reckless genetic modifications.
But once Nancy is toppled from her board and forced onto a rock that’ll only be available until the high tide in the morning, the film morphs with surprising ease into a stranded-tourist thriller pitting an endlessly resourceful woman with a propensity for swimming into hazardous rocks against what appears to be one of the hyper-intelligent great whites from Deep Blue Sea.
There have been plenty of good films about people being stuck in bad situations alone -- "Cast Away," "The Martian," "All is Lost" -- where the fun, if you will, is in watching them react to the situation, try to come up with a game plan to survive, and then deal with complications, setbacks and such.
Her companion throughout this long, lonely ordeal is a wounded seagull, the movie's version of Wilson the volleyball in Cast Away.
Ideally a sequel to "The Shallows" ("Shallows 2: This Time It's Really Very Shallow") would spin off the gull for its own film co-starring Wilson the volleyball from "Cast Away" and Daniel Radcliffe 's gassy corpse from the upcoming "Swiss Army Man."
The supporting actors are serviceable in their roles, but the fact that they’re all upstaged by a seagull (undeniably this film’s take on Cast Away‘s Wilson) is a prime illustration of the characters (except Nancy) being props to showcase the terror of the shark.
Our hero is scared: The screenwriters do Lively very few favors, with some awkward Tom Hanks -in-“Cast Away” exposition-heavy monologues.
Lively joins a group of nobodies that includes Robert Redford (All Is Lost), Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and a boulder-challenged James Franco (127 Hours), but if you ever saw her swan her way through an episode of Gossip Girl, you’ll know that she thrives in piranha-infested waters.
If you’re looking for a short, sharp hit of sun-soaked adrenaline (and who isn’t?), you won’t do any better than The Shallows, a delicious endurance thriller (think 127 Hours or All is Lost) that pits woman against shark for 87 often nerve-jangling minutes.
High-concept survivalist dramas have become an unusually rich and varied Hollywood subgenre in recent years, with a dramatic bandwidth elastic enough to accommodate the hopped-up intensity of “127 Hours,” the sublime minimalism of “All Is Lost” and the astronomical razzle-dazzle of “Gravity.”
It’s helpful to think of “The Shallows” — the spare yet serviceable new shark-themed thriller starring Blake Lively — as less of a 21st-century “Jaws” than a distaff version of “127 Hours.”
It doesn’t have any of the beaming self importance of “Open Water” or “127 Hours,” which makes it a lot more fun than it has any right to be.
The Shallows is most obviously going to call to mind Jaws, though it does so whilst borrowing elements of 127 Hours (in that we spend most of our time focused solely on one person trapped in a horrifying situation) and Castaway (Nancy’s sole companion is a friendly seagull who helps stave off delirium and madness, a slightly peppier Wilson the Volleyball).
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In 2003, "Open Water" cut deeper into our subconscious creep-zones, dropping two abandoned scuba divers in the middle of the ocean with nothing but I-don't-want-to-know-what brushing their feet.
Jaume Collet-Serra, usually found directing Liam Neeson through some dire predicaments (their joint resume consists of Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night), has managed to craft a thriller that's at least as memorable as 2003's Open Water, perhaps the last shark tale of note.
Unequivocally the best shark movie since “Jaws” (yes, even better than “Open Water” and “Deep Blue Sea”), this back-to-basics thriller either eliminates or reclaims all of the excess and gimmickry that have watered down the genre since Steven Spielberg first invented it — there’s only one killer fish, she’s shot in beautiful 2D, and it doesn’t appear as though the beast has developed the ability to swim backwards as the result of reckless genetic modifications.
It’s this arresting color shift and stylish 360-degree shots of Nancy trapped on a rocky protrusion just offshore that distinguish the movie from the isolated peril of “Open Water,” even before we get to the showcase attack effects.
It doesn’t have any of the beaming self importance of “Open Water” or “127 Hours,” which makes it a lot more fun than it has any right to be.
The Great White stars of the Jawsiad quickly ceased to resemble any beasts found in nature — they were bringing down helicopters as early as 1978's Jaws 2. But even Jaws: The Revenge ("This time, it's personal") looks like Gorillas in the Mist compared to the 21st century made-for-Syfy-shark-portmanteau plague, which asserts that camp is a thing you can engineer the way the scientists in 1999's Deep Blue Sea engineered sharks with ape-level intelligence.
Like “The Deep” — the schlocky 1977 Peter Benchley adaptation immortalized by the sight of Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt — Collet-Serra’s more aptly named film recognizes that audiences tend to be a lot more interested in water-logged thrillers when there’s a pretty actress at stake.
I remember watching the 1979 Lee Majors vehicle Killer Fish, wherein he played a jewel thief who stashes his loot at the bottom of a lake and then releases piranhas to protect it.
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Like in Jaws or Jurassic Park (two other features about menacing creatures), this first sequence hints at the horror to come.
As the sexy alternative to the protagonists of “All Is Lost” (Robert Redford is too old) and “Life of Pi” (Suraj Sharma is too young), Lively plays Nancy, a med school student who faces off against a great white shark just a few yards from shore.
But closest cousin of “The Shallows” may be 2013’s “All is Lost,” a film that stranded Robert Redford all by himself in the middle of the ocean on a sinking boat.
Lively joins a group of nobodies that includes Robert Redford (All Is Lost), Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and a boulder-challenged James Franco (127 Hours), but if you ever saw her swan her way through an episode of Gossip Girl, you’ll know that she thrives in piranha-infested waters.
In fact, The Shallows is virtuoso filmmaking – a very pared-down survival story closer in tone to philosophical Robert Redford yarn All Is Lost than it is to Jaws or Bait 3D.
Consisting for most of its notably lean running time (under 90 minutes) of Lively more or less on her own, The Shallows doesn't quite rival Robert Redford's recent All Is Lost when it comes to commandeering a film singlehandedly.
The straightforward story culls elements from 127 Hours , All is Lost , Open Water , and (of course) Jaws .