The Shallows
Columbia Pictures
Directed by: Jaume Collet=Serra
Written by: Anthony Jaswinski
Starring: Blake Lively, Oscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge
The Good
Blake Lively plays a great survivalist. You could tell she worked out for the part and immersed herself in the world of surfing to prepare for her character. She managed to display a fair range of aspects to her character. She was vulnerable when times seemed bleak, but tough when danger presented itself. The mere fact that she’s able to keep your attention while being one of the only people on screen for about 75% of the movie speaks highly to her performance.
Kudos to the shark. It was convincingly terrifying to the level that you wouldn’t want to trade places with Blake’s character on any occasion. The suspense the shark brought to the table was probably equivalent to that of the shark in Jaws.
The Bad
My biggest issue with the film was that it was incredibly predictable. You knew what was going to happen with almost every character, every time. The only minor surprises were probably the actual interactions with Blake Lively and the shark towards the end of the movie. The story and characters are pretty straight-forward and fit almost too perfectly. (Rather convenient for her that she went to a certain school.)
The Reason
If you’ve heard news or reviews about this movie you’ll hear that this is the best movie since Jaws. I will agree to that, only because what other shark movies does it have to compare with? Sharknado? If that’s the case, then yes, by default this was as good as we get since Jaws.
What you see in the trailers is exactly what you get. The Shallows isn’t a terrible movie by any means. I enjoyed it. I just don’t think it’s worth paying a lot of money to go see. I’d probably recommend catching it during the matinee or if your local theater is doing one of those discount movie days. Otherwise, if you happened to watch this at home, I think it would be perfectly fine as well. I get the feeling that this would be a good Saturday night movie to watch on TBS or TNT.
