A film like The Shallows only works if the lead can carry a horrifying tale all by themselves for 90-plus minutes. Lucky for director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Non-Stop), he has Blake Lively to anchor his film about a young woman who heads off to paradise for a surfing vacation, only to find herself stranded just off shore with a hungry shark taunting and terrifying her.
Lively has come a long way since her Gossip Girl days, most recently she stunned commanding the screen in The Age of Adaline. She plays Nancy as a woman who is desperate to find herself and thinks she has found a perfect way to do that by going on a vacation alone on a secluded Mexican beach. The surfer girl heads out on her board for what appears to be a dream day at the beach. After a few stellar sets, her delightful day turns into a nerve-wracking nightmare. A shark attacks.
Nancy manages to escape the shark’s grasp and winds up on a rock formation where the duo play a game of who can outlast the other. Given that the tide is creeping in, Nancy knows she will eventually lose this battle. Time is not on her side. She must do something to cross the 200 yards to get to the shore, or she will die out here. Ever patient, the shark circles — knowing full well that nature is on its side.
Over the course of the film, Lively shows that she is not only a movie star, she is an actress who compels with every frame of the film. As we all know, that is often not mutually exclusive. Not only do we pull for her character to survive this dire day, but we feel every emotion she emotes, the throbbing pain of her shark bite is our pain and her successes and failures become incredibly personal for the viewer — an astonishing feat for any thespian.
Collet-Serra directs with an astounding command of the need for thrilling ebbs and flows. His work on his previous films were mere warm-up acts for the palette he paints from with The Shallows. Even more contained than the plane he works with on Non-Stop, the beach, the rock where Nancy finds brief solace and the ocean itself where the shark swims all feel remarkably confining. There’s a sense that Nancy is trapped that only compounds the utter horror of what we’re watching. To say it is intense is a gross understatement.
The film arrived in early May 2016 and instantly became one of the best movies of the entire summer movie season. Time has done nothing but add to our appreciation of this masterpiece of suspense, horror and yes, human interest. It is a tale — above all else — of the triumph of the human spirit and with Lively as Collet-Serra’s vessel for all of the above, it is an utter triumph. (Check out the first 10 minutes of the movie below!)
With The Shallows arriving on DVD and Blu-Ray, the bonus features allow us to go deeper into the making of this gem and find delightful insight into how a filmmaker can scare so massively with what appears to be so little.
Given the role that landscape plays in Nancy’s scary trip, finding the perfect beach to shoot on had to be of the most monumental challenges for Collet-Serra and his team. Finding the Perfect Beach: Lord Howe Island is a stunning look at how difficult it was to find The Shallows set centerpiece. Once found, the featurette explores the hows and whys of Lord Howe Island and how it played a vital part in crafting a new classic thriller.
Once filmmakers found their beach, it was time to shoot the film. Shooting in the Shallows is a slightly too-short featurette that focuses on the painstaking effort that was making this movie. As anyone who follows the history of film knows, making a movie in and around water is a thankless task. Lively talks about how she had to get physically ready for the part, and that proved to be a priceless factor in achieving success filming a movie in and around water.
Then, there is Lively’s “co-star.” The shark gets two featurettes that show how far we’ve come from Jaws to today! When Sharks Attack gives viewers a first-hand account of what it’s like to survive a shark attack as a real-life shark attack survivor recounts their experiences while a series of experts explore the terrifying realities of shark attacks. Then, How to Build a Shark is some enthralling insight into how filmmakers crafted the shark, attempting to make it look as real as possible, using both practical models and CG.
Film Grade: A
Bonus Features: B+