Review of The Shallows

The Shallows is Jaws for the found-footage generation, complete with 21st Century product placement like GoPro, Cassio, Creatures, and Jeep.

The Good
My introduction to Blake Lively was her as a coked-up oxy-popping mama in The Town, and she played the part well.

You almost get a contact high just from looking at her.

The Shallows attempts to give her a heart-warming and inspiring backstory, but despite the good intent and bad execution, Lively shines through the murky exposition on her own merit. Portraying medical student Nancy McAdams on a Mexican retreat from life, Lively is attacked by a super-giant great white shark. Through her medical training, surfer know-how, and some lessons learned from Furiosa, she battles the shark and her own depression.

The scenery is beautiful; New South Wales and Lord Howe Island are a paradasiacal backdrop to the woman vs shark drama. The cinematography is beautiful to behold and accurately captures the constant bobbing and water-everywhere feeling that swimmers and surfers know well. More than looking beautiful, the camerwork feels right.

The experiences Lively goes through--besides the shark attack--all ring true for ocean-goers. When she slashes her foot on coral, is stung by jellyfish, is bashed against the rocks--again, all these experiences feel right to those who've experienced them.

Trapped on an outcropping of rocks, Lively hails down a drunk on the beach to go for help. Instead, he raids her bag and steals her phone, thereby harming the tourist trade in Mexico for months and ensuring he dies a morally-justifiably horrific movie death. We don't see the shark attack him, we just see Lively's human and emotionally raw response to the scene before here--and again, I gotta say, she's great in this role.

Also, the movie takes place ostensibly in Mexico, and the writers--and Lively--do a great job of portraying an American abroad with a basic understanding of Spanish. She doesn't speak it fluently like so many movies portray, nor does it take the easy-laugh route of someone who only speaks English, but rather Lively does a great job of speaking like someone who grew up in Texas and took a few years of the language.

The Bad

The backstory--it's unneeded. The whole idea is that Lively saw her mother die from cancer, and it weakens her belief in becoming a doctor to save people when some people die anyway. First off, anyone who's been through 3 years of medical school does not just say "Nah, gonna blow off and go be a surfer bum." With $250,000 paid in tuition and probably seeing her fair share of death, I have a hard time buying that our heroine just checks out of life and goes on vacation. Also, I don't think medical schools do vacations.

This is what popped up when I Googled "Vacation from med school."

The idea is that by fighting and surviving the shark, doctor-to-be McAdams finds the will to finish medical school and become a doctor. Excuse me, but isn't that an incredibly selfish story and completely unhelpful? "I'm sad my mom died from an incurable disease, but rather than give up on life I'm going to finish my last year of medical school, take a salary of $300,000 a year, and teach my sister to surf, all thanks to this shark. I owe you one, Bruce!"

Speaking of which, good crap, that's the biggest shark I've seen since I watched Jaws last week. I don't have a problem with giant shark stories, but The Shallows really feels like a retooling of the Peter Benchley novel for a modern generation. Notable homages include: intense drama when nothing is happening onscreen; the protagonist cursing the shark right before blowing it up, and the protagonists mode of transport being slowly dismantled by the shark until at last they meet on equal ground tides.

Jaws is a great movie; don't get me wrong. Even CinemaSins had a hard time finding anything wrong with it. But copying cinematic gold does not make you golden. The Shallows tries hard to elevate itself to the same plane, but it comes off desperate and canned.

Killing the shark also bends the imagination. She lures it down to the depths of, er, the shallows, and it impales itself on some metal poles. Then, because its a shark movie, it sort of blows up in sand? It's a confusing ending with a fade to black right about the time you ask "Wait, what?"

The Nitpicky
The first 10 minutes are Blake Lively glamor shots. No plot will be served until we've gotten our porn in.

The shark shows a Beautiful Mindesque obsession with Blake Lively. Rather than eat a dead whale floating nearby--a freakin humpback whale, 66,000 lbs of meat--the shark decides to chase down little buck-twenty Blake Lively for two days.

The physics. I know Hollywood isn't big on these in general, but I'm still nitpicking this. Something people have to realize: great white sharks are about the length and weight of a Dodge Ram van. They can also swim up to 35 miles an hour. So imagine your neighbor's van driving down the street and bumping into you. You're not getting up anytime soon. Somehow, Blake Lively can withstand repeated bumpings and grindings with this kind of force.

The health. Hey, human bodies are pretty resilient things. However, the movie takes this a bit too far. 18 minutes in, Lively gets bitten by the shark, which--surprisingly--only results in a pretty deep gash in her leg. Instead of, y'know, the usual result.

Again, imagine your uncle's van biting you.

However, Lively sutures her own leg with a pair of earrings. Yup.

Still though, gangrene sets in, she gets stung by a plethora of jellyfish, she rips her foot on coral, bashes her face against a metal toolbox, and gets dragged over ocean rocks repeatedly. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure you don't look like Blake Lively after going through that. Somehow though, the doctors are able to reverse the effects of gangrene, save her leg and all her teeth and magick away all her scars, which brings me to my final nit to pick.

The film ends with a "ONE YEAR LATER" epilogue where she teaches her sister to surf, showing us that she did indeed finish med school and has conquered her new-found fear of the ocean.


Uh, med school is pretty ridiculously difficult. You're telling me that in one year, she recuperated from the sharking of the century, paid all her medical bills, passed all her 4th year exams, learned to walk again, etc etc etc? Oh, you are? Well okay then.

All in all, it's a good film to watch for less than $9.50, but if you can dollar movie it up, do it. Lively does an excellent job showing herself to be a serious actor, the scenery and cinematography are gorgeous, and the sins--which I'm sure CinemaSins will catalogue soon--aren't enough to completely spoil the movie.