The Shallows (2016)
DIRECTOR: Jaume Collet-Serra
CAST: Blake Lively
REVIEW:
While the two movies’ plot specifics are very different, in a way, The Shallows reminded me of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity; both are nearly one-man shows featuring a woman using strong survival instincts and limited resources at her disposal in a grueling struggle for survival. Also, like Gravity, while sometimes gripping in the moment, the thin premise feels a little shallow (no pun intended) and insubstantial when all is said and done. Neither is a “bad” movie, but I also personally feel the praise showered on both is a little overblown. Nevertheless, The Shallows may prove an engaging Friday night diversion for those seeking something other than a comedy, a superhero movie, or a CGI-fest.
The story is certainly simple and straightforward. Aspiring med student Nancy (Blake Lively) takes an impromptu mini-vacation to a secluded, picturesque Mexican beach to do some surfing and recuperate from the recent death of her mother. But a therapeutic escape turns abruptly into a living nightmare when, about 200 yards offshore, Nancy is attacked and injured by a huge great white shark, making a narrow escape by climbing onto a small rock protruding from the water. But unless she can figure out a way to make it back to shore, her escape may be short-lived. She has only 12 hours until the rising tide will submerge her rock, leaving nothing between her and the waiting shark.
The Shallows’ set-up is effective, if a little generic. Nancy’s backstory is sketched out quickly and efficiently, albeit heavy-handedly, in early expositional phone conversations with her father (Brett Cullen) and little sister (Sedona Legge). As he also did in the Liam Neeson airplane thriller Non-Stop, director Jaume Collet-Serra superimposes the text messages and the faces of the actors on the other line over the screen. For the first fifteen minutes or so, Collet-Serra gives us slow-motion picturesque shots of Blake Lively surfing the waves that look straight out of some tourism commercial, and seems to try to lull us into thinking nothing ominous is coming (though, because we know it is, the seemingly peaceful opening only builds tension over when the shark is going to make its abrupt entrance). Conveniently for the premise, Nancy’s friend who was supposed to accompany her is first laid up with a hangover, then later hooks up with a one-night stand, meaning no one will be missing Nancy for the 12 hours she’s stranded on a submerging rock. Her cell phone is on the beach. Potential rescuers pop up intermittently, chiefly in the form of a couple of local surfers, but there’s the danger that anyone who comes for her might end up as victims themselves. For most of the movie, her only companion is an injured seagull (sort of this movie’s equivalent of Castaway‘s “Winston”, though unlike that movie, where poor desperately lonely Tom Hanks formed an emotional attachment to a volleyball, at least Nancy gets a living creature for company, so I guess that’s a slight upgrade). Like Sandra Bullock’s stranded astronaut in Gravity, pickings are slim with resources, and Nancy has to improvise, using a necklace to help stitch up her gashed leg. Late in the movie, we’re saddled with Blake Lively staring in tearful close-up into the camera giving a cliched sappy “goodbye to loved ones” monologue (the kind of thing Gravity also indulged in to a sappy, momentum-killing extent, and which The Martian to its credit avoided, or at least skimmed quickly through). There is a buoy floating tantalizingly nearby, but can she make the short swim to a more permanent perch before the circling shark catches her making a break for it? And odds look even worse when a swarm of jellyfish floats by as a decidedly inconvenient plot device.
On the plus side, despite the “Cliches and Plot Complications 101” nature of Anthony Jaswinski’s script, The Shallows is technically well-crafted. The movie does a devious job of setting up the premise, and the 12 hours to high tide represents a unique kind of countdown. The most maddening thing about Nancy’s predicament is that the shore is only a tantalizing 200 yards away. She can sit and stare at safety almost within her grasp. The scene in which she stitches up her gashed leg without anesthesia, filmed in unsparing closeup, is genuinely uncomfortable to watch (the movie pushes the boundaries of its PG-13 rating with this and one or two other moments of graphic violence). The shark is mostly seen in glimpses, at least until the climax, but it’s a convincing blend of the real thing, CGI, and animatronics. For the most part, it’s hard to distinguish where one ends and the other begins, which is the best compliment to be paid of the special effects. At its core, the shark isn’t really the focus of the story anyway, just a plot device to drive the action. Like Gravity, what it’s really “about” is a thinly-veiled allegory about people pushing themselves through seemingly insurmountable barriers and persevering. Whether the heroine is an astronaut floating in space or a surfer stranded on a rock is almost beside the point. The specifics are very different but the underlying theme is the same.
Virtual one-man shows like this depend heavily on an effective lead performance, and Blake Lively proves capable of holding the camera’s attention even when she spends probably two-thirds of the movie laying injured on a rock (she’s not the only actor in the movie, but she’s the only one whose screentime consists of more than a few minutes). Along with Sandra Bullock in Gravity, her role in this movie is also a cinematic cousin to the likes of James Franco in 127 Hours or Robert Redford in All Is Lost. Nancy is no superwoman or action heroine (at least not maybe until the climax), she’s a normal person thrown into a life-or-death situation, but she’s determined and reasonably smart and tough in the ways she deals with her problems.
Ironically, The Shallows is weakest when it reaches its action-packed climax, with Nancy going into action heroine mode and an ending that not only recalls the father of all shark movies, Jaws, but might surpass it for an unlikely resolution that surpasses the 1975 classic for the colossally perfect timing it requires for the protagonist to get away with their final move. Without giving away details, the climactic moment here, while maybe not 100% “impossible”, is a little far-fetched. And like Gravity, the thin premise, however gripping it may be in the moment, feels a bit hollow and underwhelming when all is said and done. But its obvious weaknesses don’t stop The Shallows from being diverting thriller in the moment even if it doesn’t linger strongly in the memory (the same that could be said of Collet-Serra’s Non-Stop). It won’t have the lasting cultural impact of Jaws, but among shark attack movies (most of which are inferior to The Shallows, let alone Jaws), it’s a decent homage.
* * 1/2