Review of The Shallows (2016) by Chloe4Soc — 17 Oct 2016

The Shallows came out in theaters on June 24, 2016, and has made the top charts. This movie has made over 16 million dollars 11 days after it came out. Watching this movie might make you not want to go back in the water. Other than the movie Jaws, where there are man-eating sharks, The Shallows is a little less freaky but will still make the hairs on your arms stand up. The main character, Nancy (Blake Lively), always had a dream of surfing at the same beach her mom loved to surf at before she passed away from cancer. Her dream finally came true, however one day, her life turned into a nightmare. A huge Great White Shark attacked her and almost turned her left leg to shreds. Stranded out in the middle of the ocean at a vacant beach 200 yards from shore, Nancy must fight for her life as the deadly predator circles her in its feeding ground.

However, Nancy, a medical student dropout, was able to use her jacket to stop the blood flow and her earrings to “stitch” her gash back together, until she could find help. Without any medical history, the main character would not have been able to survive more than a day unless she had medical help right away. In the end, Nancy kills the deadly shark and uses all of her energy to swim to the shore to find help immediately.

Blake Lively’s new movie The Shallows, isn’t based on a true story, but it follows in the fictional footsteps of Jaws as a fictional shark attack movie, and there are a few shark movies that are actually based on true events. When it comes to shark movies, there are plenty of sharks in films but relatively few films entirely about sharks. This what makes Jaume Collet-Serra’s, the spanish director, new feature The Shallows so unusual. It’s a story about a young woman stranded off the shore of a “Secret” Mexican beach known on as “Paradise”, as a great white prowls around her, waiting to gobble her up. “The fewer resources you have, the more creative you have to get and that fuels my mojo,” Collet-Serra says about the attraction of the project.

Although the movie was a popular thriller, there was some criticism as well. Many people thought it started out too slow and should have been more of a life threatening movie from the start. There was also some talk that until the last 20-30 minutes, of the movie, nothing really happened until she tried to escape from the man-eating shark.

In conclusion, there was some negative criticism, but after making the top charts and getting over 16 million dollars, The Shallows is a popular one, and will probably still be throughout 2016.