No thanks to SyFy for turning sharks into laughable sideshow acts
with their ridiculous Sharknado movies,
but it's good to be reminded that we're actually supposed to be terrified of
these aquatic predators. That's what Jaume Collet-Serra's survival thriller The Shallows does, to
modest effect anyway, by having a lone surfer come face-to-nose with a hungry
shark. The setup is lean, the star is Blake Lively, and for 60 of its 80+
minute runtime the film has some serious teeth, until the final stretch bites
off more than it can chew.
Lively, whose stark Hollywood beauty
causes many to either hate or underestimate her, commits fully to the role of
Nancy, a Texas gal on vacation in Mexico to surf a beach that held special
relevance to her late mother. Everything we need to know about her is wrapped
up in five minutes: med school dropout, kind of a boring homebody, strained
relationship with her father. What more do we need to know? Get to the
"Shark Week" portion of the show, already.

Cinematographer Flavio Labiano knows what
he has in Lively as his camera never stays away from her beach body for too
long. But she's more than just a pretty face, adapting to some of the film's
cornier elements, such as the chatty relationship she has with her feathered
companion, and fully committing to the physical aspects. The most
difficult of those to stomach is Nancy's improvised stitching of her wounds,
using pretty much whatever she can find. It's not pretty, but it goes to
establishing Nancy as smart and resourceful when in an unusual jam, and they
don't get much more unusual than this.

Rating: 3 out of 5