No visual coherence, no respect for Hitchcock’s lessons – no thriller at all

The Shallows Running time: 1 hr 26 min Starring: Blake Lively, Oscar Jaenada,Angelo Josue, Lozano Corzo, Jose Manuel,Trujillo Salas, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge, Pablo Calva, Diego Espejel Director: Jaume Collet-Serra “SHALLOW” is a mild word for it. Others would be silly, miscalculated, unconvincing, artless, pandering, hokey, ridiculous. Or just plain awful. An old-fashioned shark-attack exploitation picture that willfully disregards all the important lessons of suspense filmmaking passed down from Alfred Hitchcock and, most applicably in this case, Steven Spielberg, The Shallows may generate a bit of commercial traction as a youngwoman-in-peril (non) thriller. But what's onscreen is much closer to a late-1970s AIP-style cheapie than to what you expect from a major studio.

You can just hear the pitch: Out doing a little surfing south of the border, Blake Lively gets stuck on a rock that keeps being circled by a giant shark. Three local dudes get eaten while she’s out there, and part of a whale, too. And maybe there should be an injured seagull so Blake has someone to talk to.

That's pretty much the extent of the story in Anthony Jaswinski's screenplay, which director Jaume Collet-Serra (the immortal Liam Neeson actioners Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night) manages to extend into 80 minutes (not including the long end credits) of running time. It’s still 80 minutes you won't get back.

Establishing from the outset a visual approach that presents no coherent style at all – shots come at you from persistently unrelated angles with inconsistent focal lengths and lenses, film speeds change willy-nilly – the helmer still manages to set up the basic situation: Gregarious Texan medical student Nancy (Lively) has come to her late mother’s favorite beach (with Australia’s stunning Lord Howe Island standing in for Mexico) for some head-clearing surfing. She has the place, situated on a perfect, jungleenshrouded crescent bay, almost to herself, save for a couple of local good-times guys who warn her about the tides.

When Nancy stays out there a little too long and the beast shows up, she takes refuge on the only available real estate, a tiny rock island distinguished by its sharp edges and coral, on which she severely cuts a leg. The medschool background comes in handy here, as it’s evidently taught her to (unconvincingly) suture a deep wound with the ear pins she conveniently wears. There’s a whale floating about nearby whose bloody open wounds prove enticing to the shark.

A generous measure of sympathy cannot be denied to Lively, who is entirely game for the heavy rigors obviously demanded of her in the water and on the rocks. The camera is in her face and all over her body all the time. It was a gamble on her part, whether she could withstand the close scrutiny of a camera alone on screen the majority of the time, like Robert Redford in All Is Lost or, to a lesser extent, Matt Damon in The Martian. Unfortunately for her, she didn't get the level of creative behind-the-camera help they did. – Hollywood Reporter