Jaume Collet-Serra‘s survival thriller feels like a movie that was written in 1980 and just now saw the light of day as a vehicle for Blake Lively. 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. Lively is gorgeous and charming as American tourist Nancy Adams, a medical student still reeling from the death of her mother after a long losing battle with cancer. Taking a hiatus from work and all of her responsibilities, she travels to Mexico to relax and surf on the beach. While waiting for some waves, she’s attacked by a massive shark that knocks her off of her board, and leaves her to plunge in to the tide where she cuts her leg open, hobbling any and all efforts to swim back to shore.
Stuck on a small rock, and without any chance of out swimming her hungry predator, Nancy has to figure out how to get back to land, or at least hope to attract the attention of someone on shore to help her. Just her luck she manages to cross paths with a lot of inept locals that offer some dramatic tension and admittedly cheap red herrings. Blake Lively’s lead performance is solid, but what’s so memorable about “The Shallows” is its schlocky template. The more the story drags on, the sillier the movie becomes and we almost have zero hope for character Nancy Adams. This is a movie where a drunken man walks in to the ocean only to be eaten by a shark and drag himself out, with his bottom half consumed.
This is a movie where Lively’s character befriends an injured seagull (credited as Steven Seagull). Seriously by the end of the first half hour, it’s practically her sidekick, and arguably her guiding angel, if you want to add some spirituality to the narrative. Nancy is also attacked by a shark that’s been swallowed in flames, and chances a swim through jellyfish to evade her hunter. At barely eighty minutes, “The Shallows” is a very straight forward action thriller that skirts the edges of the R rating, and tries in vain to squeeze in some melodramatic themes about death, grieving, and savoring life.
See, Nancy is on the brink of death, and the shark is death incarnate. She has to decide if she wants to embrace death, or fight as hard as her mother did, and hopefully make it out to see another day. All the while the seagull symbolizes the fragility of life. Don’t worry I didn’t spoil anything, as Collet-Serra is not at all subtle about the metaphor and allegories from the moment Nancy is thrust on to a dead whale and forced to hide along its rotting carcass. “The Shallows” is fun, man vs. nature, breezy, summer time action; it’s a movie you can sit down to with some beers and chips, and enjoy the tense survival thrills, and unique beauty of Blake Lively.