The shallows, as the movie’s title indicates, is not very deep, but to its defense, it’s not meant to be.
Grade: B- (*** out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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The Shallows is a hybrid of survival-horror thriller, belonging to a genre of films whose stories rely entirely on a single character.
The best of of the above still is Robert Zemeckis’s 2000 Oscar-nominated survival drama, Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks.
The movie delivers the anticipated goods in a predictable but satisfying mode, turning a minor low-budget flick into a rather enjoyable experience.
Watching this trashy B-movie, coming from a major studio (Sony), I was actually reminded of the movie The Deep, which was not deep either, but in which the then young and beautiful Jacqueline Bissett appears in sexy bathing swims and tight wet T-shirts.
Nearly forty years later, it’s the beautiful and sexy Blake Lively, who plays Nancy, a blond clad in tight bikini, sending most of the time alone in the waters, fighting a nasty white shark.
You might think that The Shallows is an update of Spielberg’s classic Jaws, but this throwaway of a flick is not, though it may serve as a good vehicle to catapult Blakely into major stardom.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop) and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski are shrewd enough to know what to do with such material, how to turn it into a nail-biting thriller (especially in the second half of the narrative).
The director begins the movie with a flash-forward in which a young boy finds the camera on the beach and the video footage shows the surfers getting gobbled by the shark.
Nancy, a medical student spending some time alone on the favorite Mexican beach of her late mother, travels light, not many clothes, but sure enough armed with a surfboard and a cell phone
The cell phone is useful in many ways. For starters, it offers details of Nancy’s background as Texas girl. Through FaceTime chats, we learn that her father is upset by her decision to drop out of med school, and that her younger and closer sister wished she could be with her in Mexico.
Before the menacing shark appears, Nancy confronts human predators, like two Mexican surfers who invade her space in what’s otherwise a deserted cove. As expected they hit on her to join them.
The guys tell her about a jagged rock 200 yards off shore that you can only see at low tide. And we know that this piece of info would be useful later on, when the shark strands her in the water?
Back on the beach, Nancy rides one big wave after another until a huge wave reveals the threatening shark from a distance.
Once the anticipated struggle begins, Nancy puts to use her medical training, turning a wet suit into a tourniquet or use her necklace for stitching. Later on, waiting for a rescue, she shows her humanistic side by tending to a wounded seagull.
The major challenge with such a formulaic text is not its predictability—Nancy cannot be defeated or killed because she is the film’s sole character—but how to build up tension for the duration of what’s an extremely shallow stuff. Hence the title.
Budget and Box-Office
The movie carries a modest $17 million price tag and is looking at an opening of $7 million when it debuts on roughly 2,800 screens.
The film is one of the first greenlit under Tom Rothman, Sony’s new film chief, after he took over the studio’s leadership from Amy Pascal in 2015.
The movie was hugely popular at the box-office, earning $119.1 million at the box-office.
Credits:
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by Anthony Jaswinski
Produced by Lynn Harris, Matti Leshem
Cinematography Flavio Labiano
Edited by Joel Negron
Music by Marco Beltrami
Production companies: Columbia Pictures, Weimaraner Republic Pictures, Ombra Films
Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing
Release dates: June 21, 2016 (NY); June 24, 2016 (US)
Running time: 86 minutes
Budget $17 million
Box office $119.1 million
