Shark menaces rising star, but it’s no threat to Jaws
The Shallows
K (out of 4) Starring Blake Lively and Oscar Jaenada. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Opens Friday at major theatres. 86 minutes. 14A
Of course you’re going to think of Jaws while watching The Shallows.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra expects and encourages this. He and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski toss in so many callbacks to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 summer blockbuster their efficient homage risks being viewed as a blatant rip-off — although it’s more clever than that.
The movie plays as an extended “what if?” to the opening of Jaws, right down to the careless girl, the ominous red buoy and the hungry shark.
Nancy (Blake Lively), a medical student mourning the recent death of her mother, seems almost suicidal in her vacation abandon. She’s determined to surf the remote Mexican beach her mom loved, despite being alone and not having arranged for a return ride.
“I’m reliable!” she insists to her concerned driver, who takes that to mean “bossy.” However one interprets her tenacity, Nancy will soon need it. While surfing about 200 metres from shore, she’s attacked by a giant shark, barely escaping it by clambering onto a rock outcrop. Now she has to figure out how to get back to dry land, as the rising tide threatens immersion, her injured leg bleeds and the voracious CGI shark hovers. This is potentially a starmaking role for Lively, who usually is in the supporting cast of her films. Sexy without being Baywatch ridiculous — despite the bright orange bikini and Flavio Labiano’s voyeuristic camera — she’s also athletic enough to convince as surfer and shark fighter.
Collet-Serra knows how to maintain suspense and to set up jump scares, which he previously demonstrated in the horror film Orphan and several Liam Neeson actioners.
He tosses in 21st-century updates involving cellphones and a helmetcam video. The other people who enter the scene of this otherwise one-woman drama, all of them unsuspecting males, quickly discover that “shark!” is English for “You’re lunch!” in this context.
The director is no hostage to logic, even when he inspires eye rolls over Nancy’s amazing suturing skills with earrings or her new-found ability as a bird whisperer to avian pal “Steven Seagull,” another CGI critter.
The Shallows pushes the buttons it’s supposed to push for a summer-thriller, even if the outcome is as deflating as it is dumb. You’ll never forget Jaws while watching it, likely appreciating all the more the scarier movie Spielberg made using suggestion, sound and a rubber shark.