Movie Review: The Shallows ★★★☆☆

The Shallows (2016)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Genre: Thriller, Shark- horror

Running Time: 86 minutes

Starring: Blake Lively

I haven’t always liked Blake Lively. It was actually quite recently that I found out she wasn’t just a pretty face. I liked her in The Age of Adaline (2015) and because of The Shallows (2016) I’m even more convinced of her talent. (plus, she’s an obsessive Harry Potter fan and married to Ryan Reynolds - that should count for something right?).

I really liked The Shallows. I loved the shark and (a lot of) the scares. All right, the script isn’t amazing. The conversations between American Blake Lively and the Spanish-speaking Mexicans aren’t quite Oscar worthy, but hey, it’s a (sort of) slasher. The script is supposed to be a little bad right? I did laugh out loud when Lively called a seagull, Steven Seagull, though.

There is another recent horror film about sharks, In the Deep (2016) with Claire Holt and Mandy Moore. Even though it went straight to DVD, I thought it was a decent film. It was, however, not better than The Shallows. The latter has the advantage of amazing surroundings. At moments, the film felt like a documentary, because the beach is so beautiful. Almost all ‘shark- horror’ relies on a (or two) strong lead(s). Moore and Holt were all right in In the Deep, but Lively is more interesting alone than the other two together. Blake Lively is the heart and soul of The Shallows. There are very few seconds without Lively on screen and it just works.

The ending (I won’t spoil it for you, don’t worry) was a little disappointing and a little farfetched. But again, that is what we can expect from horror films nowadays (unfortunately). Also, the epilogue was unnecessary. But besides that The Shallows was a really exciting little film. The short running time was a clever choice, because if it would have been 30 minutes longer, the threatening atmosphere would have been long gone.

I was torn between three stars and four stars. I decided on three, because although I think the premise was great and I will always try to encourage horror(-y) films that think outside the box, I can’t get over the fact that that whale just ‘suddenly’ turned up and wasn’t visible before (even though it’s a few meters away from both the rock and the buoy).

 ★★★☆☆