It was Steven Spielberg’s classic Jaws that opened the world’s eyes to the horrors of the great white shark. Since Jaws opening in 1975, many films have tried to recreate that terrifying scenario that there is always some large, toothy creature lurking below you when you are in the water. However a classic can never be recreated, no matter how much a film tries to change the story ever so slightly or change the title of the film. The Shallows is one of these films, taking a beautiful blonde actress (Blake Lively) and making her shark bait for a terrifyingly large great white, which of course singles her out as his kill.
In The Shallows, Nancy (Lively) is a medical student who goes on vacation to a beach her mother frequented often. Her mother recently passed away from cancer, and she is there to connect with and remember her. Nancy slips on her wetsuit and hits the swells for surfing, swimming out past the shallows of the reef. She then discovers a whale carcass floating above the water, chewed up and rotting. She senses danger and heads back to shore, when suddenly a large great white shark slams into her, knocking her off her board. She climbs back on, paddling back to shore as fast as she can, but the shark bites deep into her leg, spilling blood into the ocean. Too far from the shore and as the sun begins to set, she swims to a buoy to escape the shark. Will she make it back to shore? Or will she become fish food by morning?
Blake Lively is an incredible actress whom I have followed almost religiously since her days as Serena Van Der Woodsen on “Gossip Girl”. However, The Shallows is not a role that does her justice at all. While it is a nice change for her to be in a more thriller kind of role, the film consists of her doing very little throughout its entirety and you find yourself wanting to fast forward to the next scene. Once again, the whole “girl in distress by shark attack” is extremely been there done that. The entire films concept lacks originality, and is not only extremely slow paced, but boring to watch.
I suppose with only a $17 million budget, one can’t expect much from this film. But leaving a character in distress hanging to a buoy for much of the film is far from entertaining. I believe if more had been done to alter the plot, this movie could have been salvaged somewhat.
Grade: C
