Summer is here and what better way to enjoy it than to eat some popcorn and engross yourself with a cheesy shark attack movie!…except The Shallows isn’t that movie. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (Run All Night) and starring Blake Lively, The Shallows is a B-movie snooze fest with impressive cinematography and a few jumps but very little else.
Medical student Nancy Adams (Blake Lively) is on the search for a secluded beach once visited by her late mother after finding out she was pregnant with Nancy many years before. Nancy finds a local named Carlos (Óscar Jaenada), who is familiar with the beach and agrees to take her to her destination. Upon her arrival, Nancy meets a couple of young surfers and the three spend the afternoon surfing and enjoying the beautiful surroundings, something Nancy desperately needed. Since taking a break from medical school, Nancy has traveled the world in search of the answer to her future, but her sister Chloe (Sedona Legge) and father (Brett Cullen) are worried about where her journey might take her.
As the sunset arrives, the young surfers head in, but Nancy is determined to catch one more wave. Nancy notices something very strange out beyond the break and begins to worry that she is within the grasp of danger. As Nancy decides to turn in, she is attacked by a shark and marooned on an isolated rock sticking out of the lagoon several hundred yards from shore. Determined to survive her predicament, Nancy must face the reality that she is alone, injured and without many options, but she must find a way to get to get to shore.
The Shallows works to build the tension of a normal shark attack film, but the reality is, it’s not that interesting. Shark movies thrive on suspense, ala Open Water or Jaws, preying on our fear of the unknown ocean and its creatures, which this film attempts to achieve, but it winds up trying to emulate the latter Jaws films where shock trumps originality. Blake Lively does her best to provide an ample amount of emotion to sell the impending doom, but you spend most of the time feeling that we’ve “been there, done that” and there’s nothing truly special connecting you to her character. Also, the ending that we’re sold as being as a “twist” ends up being nothing more than goofy and far fetched that you can’t help but laugh.
Overall, The Shallows could be nothing or exactly what you thought it would be; either way, it’s not worth the price of admission.
Stars:
2 out of 5
After Credit Scene?
No
Trailer:
Sometimes a film divides an audience right down the middle. Something so unique and deep that it either inspires a deluge of praise or a tirade of… well, let’s say “unkind words.” Writer/Producer/Director Ryan David‘s “relationship meets art” love story, Seattle Road has a great tagline:
Tommy Shellner (Ryan O’ Nan) is one of four children who return home to celebrate their father’s last birthday before he passes away from lung cancer. Their father, Dr. Nathaniel Shellner (Judd Hirsch), is a retired psychologist of the CIA, who specialized in working with soldiers suffering from PTSD, and wants to be remembered for his patriotic achievements. With the knowledge that their father is approaching his final days, the children and their mother do what they can to make their night a pleasant one, however that is not Tommy’s main concern. Tommy, his sister Julie (Jaime Ray Newman), and their brother Harry (C.S Lee) were adopted into the family when they were kids while their other brother Leonard (Joseph Lyle Taylor) was their mother (Caroline Lagerfelt) and father’s biological son. For a while now, Tommy has felt that his father has been hiding something from his children, and after multiple sessions of therapy he has now reached the conclusion that his father had experimented on him and his adopted siblings when they were young. Over the course of the night, voices get raised and minds get rattled, while Tommy and his siblings trying to piece together what seems like a repressed memory of torture.
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