Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, thanks to the cheesy schlock of the Sharknado movies, along comes The Shallows, a marine thriller that is as sleek and scary as the ocean’s most fearsome predator.
Tapping into the primal terrors that lurk beneath the water’s surface, The Shallows pits Blake Lively’s lone American surfer Nancy against a great white shark in a desperate battle for survival. She has travelled to a remote Mexican cove, location of her late mother’s favourite beach, little realising that it has become the great white’s feeding ground.
Her first bloody encounter with the shark leaves her stranded on a tiny rock, 200 yards from the beach. Her attacker lies between her and the shore, and high tide is coming. How can she survive?
Director Jaume Collet-Serra (maker of the Liam Neeson thrillers Non-Stop and Run All Night) turns Nancy’s ordeal into heart-stoppingly tense cinema. Putting the lithe Lively in a bikini makes her eye candy for the viewer, but it also makes her seem acutely vulnerable. Yet, as Lively’s gutsy performance makes clear, her heroine is incredibly resilient and resourceful, too, improvising a needle and suture to patch up her wounds (handily, she’s a medical student) and thinking up canny strategies to outwit her foe.
Certificate 15. Runtime 86 mins. Director Jaume Collet-Serra
The Shallows is available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdxIlSuB70
Blu-ray, DVD & Digital extras include
- Deleted Scenes
- Four Featurettes:
- “Shooting in The Shallows”
- “How to Build a Shark”
- “Finding The Perfect Beach: Lord Howe Island”
- “When Sharks Attack”
