Review of The Shallows (2016) by Kyle D — 19 Jul 2016

Since Jaws we've seen a scaling up of shark movies with more massive sharks in higher quantities. The Shallows promised to dial back the absurdity and take a more realistic approach to shark attacks. I thought perhaps I'd get something like "this is how you might survive a shark attack in real life." I thought maybe the movie would even address issues like how incredibly rare shark attacks are and the plight of diminishing great white shark populations. The movie did not deliver any of those things. It was the usual fear and suspense with tacked-on backstory to shoehorn depth and meaning into it, and there was a lot more cringing at pain than being scared of the shark. But the shark was indeed characterized as a truly malicious monster, and it had a vendetta against one specific human despite having an entire whale to feed on. Setting aside physics-bending maneuvers and unrealistic shark behavior, what's really baffling is that the writers didn't even seem to realize that there are not one but two high tides in a 24-hour period.

Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws, regretted the way he demonized an animal, but The Shallows failed to learn from his mistake.