Ten Days of Terror!: The Shallows

Film: The Shallows
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I think it takes a certain amount of guts to make a shark movie. Jaws is not merely the definitive shark movie, but might well be the definitive “Man vs. Nature” movie. The characters are well-created and we genuinely feel for them and want them to survive. The shark is terrifying in large part because it spends most of the movie hidden. A lot of things have been attempted with shark movies. The Shallows goes the route of minimalism, and it’s genuinely the right choice.

One thing that makes The Shallows effective as a film is that it relies in large part on something that is true: the majority of shark attacks happen in shallow water and close to the beach. It’s true in the real world, and in the cinematic world, it means that the safety of dry land is always going to be visible and tantalizingly close.

Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), following the cancer death of her mother, has backed out of medical school. She has travelled to Mexico in search of a particular secret beach that her mother found when she was pregnant, so for Nancy, this feels like connecting to her mother and her own origin. She gets a ride with Carlos (Óscar Jaenada) and discovers a couple of surfers (Angelo Josue Lozano Corzo and Joseph Salas) on the beach when she gets there. She paddles out to them and spends the afternoon surfing with them, initially disappointed that her friend has stayed back at the hotel, nursing a hangover.

Eventually, the two surfers call it a day and Nancy goes out for a last wave. She discovers the carcass of a humpback whale, and then rides her final wave. On her way into shore, she is upended and bitten by our villain, the shark that is hunting in these waters.

What follows is Nancy’s attempt to survive until help comes, which in this case means spending the night on a temporary island that exists only when the tide is out. The shark will be a constant companion and constant threat. Nancy shares the rock with a wounded seagull she names Steven Seagull as she tries to figure out a way to get back to the shore, about 200 yards away—close, but given what is waiting in the water for her, effectively 10 miles away.

It’s not going to be an effective shark movie if we don’t get a few kills, and we know that Nancy, while she may not necessarily make it to the end of the movie (there’s always the chance that the shark will win, after all), isn’t going to be chewed up when there’s still a half an hour running time. And so we’ll have a few victims manufactured for us. That sounds flippant and I don’t intend for it to be so—the shark victims actually feel pretty organic in how they come to the beach and are dispatched by the great white. The shark attacks are effective and surprising, even when we know they are coming.

The Shallows really is that simple as a film. Nancy gets stuck close to shore but can’t get back and the shark is a constant reminder that she is pinned there alone and without help. Honestly, if there hadn’t been a number of shark attack movies already (the Jaws series, of course, but also The Meg, Open Water, 47 Meters Down, Deep Blue Sea, The Reef, and then all of the silly ones like Sharknado and 3-Headed Shark Attack) it would feel like a completely original and effective thriller. As it is, it’s perhaps not that original, but it’s still pretty effective.

The biggest drawback to The Shallows is the obvious CGI nature of the shark itself. To be fair, this movie would probably be impossible to make with entirely practical effects given the nature of what the shark has to do, but practical effects are always going to be more effective than CGI. One of the reasons that Jaws is as good as it is comes from the fact that Bruce the shark is legitimately there on set with the actors. It’s an unfortunate reality that this film probably couldn’t be made that way, but it would have been an improvement if it could have been.

The one thing I thought was a conceit of the film was the idea that the beach where this takes place has only a single tide per day. This is actually a real thing that occurs in a few places around the world, including areas of northern Mexico.

It’s worth mentioning Blake Lively for at least a moment. This is an actor I am almost entirely unfamiliar with. I think this might be the first of her movies I’ve seen and I have never watched even a frame of Gossip Girl. Lively needs to hold the story and hold the frame for the bulk of the film, and she pulls it off well.

Why to watch The Shallows: It’s a genuinely effective shark film.
Why not to watch: Practical effects are always better than CGI.