‘The Shallows’ Review: It’s Time For More Silly Blake Lively Vs Shark Movies

Why do people love shark movies? 41 years after Steven Spielberg’s Jaws supposedly made people afraid to go into the water, they just keep coming. And I don’t just mean cheap trash like Ghost Shark (it is about a shark that is also a ghost) or the Sharknado franchise — although they count too. I mean major movies being released in theatres, preying upon audience’s fear of sharks. Deep Blue Sea, The Reef, Shark Night, Bait 3D, Dark Tide, and Open Water are just some of the shark-themed mainstream releases to come out in my lifetime.

Now, most of those were not any good, but consider how many movies about spiders came about in the wake of Arachnophobia, or about bees after The Swarm, or about clowns after It. Galeophobia (it’s a thing) is by far the most common fear to be abused by filmmakers for an audience’s frightened amusement. As someone who isn’t scared of sharks the same way as I am scared of bees, spiders, clowns, I guess I am thankful. But because of that, I have seen my fair share and until now they had become pretty tiresome and pointless.

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“The Best Shark Movie Since Jaws“

This brings us to The Shallows: an often thrilling and just-as-often ridiculous shark thriller starring Blake Lively and a seagull nicknamed Steven (geddit?) that’s been hailed as “the best shark movie since Jaws“. That sounds a bit like damning with faint praise considering the competition involves a movie in which a tsunami flushes a great white shark into a supermarket on the Gold Coast and another that is only remembered because Samuel L. Jackson got eaten by a silly CGI shark by surprise.

Still, it’s worth crowing that Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows no doubt is the best shark movie since Jaws. It sees the Spanish director return to the horror trappings of his earlier work: films like the better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be House of Wax remake (yes, the one with Paris Hilton) and the altogether nuts Orphan that took a backseat in recent years to Liam Neeson action thrillers Non-Stop (enjoyable) and Run All Night (not enjoyable).

Collet-Serra is a director who has built up a certain degree of cultish devotion for good reason. His movies are pulpy, but flashy. If vulgar auteurism was still a thing, The Shallows would see Collet-Serra finally usurp Michael Bay thanks to his overly silly yet sincerely rendered genre titles that flirt with being so-bad-they’re-good, but are in fact just plain old-fashioned good. Except Run All Night. That was garbage.

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Just A Girl On A Rock Asking A Shark Not To Eat Her

The Shallows sees Blake Lively star as Nancy, a med student who has ditched school and life in general following the death of her mother from cancer. Nancy visits a remote beach in Mexico that requires a guide to locate and decides to go surfing. Here, she comes across two locals, but as they head back to shore, she remains behind to catch one more wave. With the shadow of a great white hovering through the cresting wave, Nancy is rear-ended and bitten. Stranded on a rocky outlier some 200 metres from shore and unable to flag down any help, Nancy must use her experience and her determination to outlast the shark.

Despite this being a predominantly one-woman show — plus the seagull; we love that damn seagull — there’s plenty of blood getting spilled. People do get eaten, and it happens in some outlandish ways. But while much of The Shallows has a tinge of silliness to it, it’s ultimately an effective thriller. Best of all, it emphasises the smarts and the strengths of Lively’s character. Nancy isn’t just some nondescript girl in peril, but an intelligent woman who uses the meagre assets at her disposal to combat the great white that’s angling for its next meal.

You’ll giggle as a shark leaps out of the water and as she dives through a bloom of jellyfish, but you’ll also wince at the gore, sink into your seat at the suspense, and find yourself marvelling at how she’s able to turn her wetsuit into the Swiss Army Knife of fashion.

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Low Stakes, But High Returns

The Shallows has proven to be one of the big surprises of the year. It hasn’t grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, and on the (inarguably questionable) Rotten Tomatoes it sits at a relatively subdued score of 77 percent. But in a blockbuster movie season that has seen more disappointments than successes, the low-budget, low-stakes Blake Lively vs. Shark movie has proven itself to be a movie worth cheering for.

It’s a welcome tonic from the nasty, blackened gruel of cinema that is Suicide Squad which was just the capper of a run of movies that both audiences and critics by and large shrugged their shoulders at. Did you know The Huntsman: Winter’s War came out just four months ago? Remember Jason Bourne? It came out four weeks ago.

Films like The Shallows should be championed far more than they are. This is a smart, effective thriller that gives popcorn flicks a good name. It embraces its silliness, but doesn’t let itself become just a joke. It’s gorgeous to look at, too, not least of all because Lively’s athleticism is captivating on-screen and proves she really could be a movie star in her own right. The Shallows is lean and mean, and even if it’s not Jaws, it makes the prospect of another killer shark movie not entirely unwelcome.

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The Shallows is in cinemas now.

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