★★★
As a summer blockbuster to sit back and switch off to, The Shallows delivers, featuring enough chills to convince the audience to overlook how snarkily well the content reflects the title.
Nancy (Blake Lively) has been searching for a secret beach in Mexico, one her mother visited decades ago, and she’s finally found it. But as the sun sets over paradise, Nancy comes face to face with nature’s perfect predator, and finds herself forced into a battle of attrition after climbing to safety on an outcrop of rock.
The setup leaves its audience expecting a pulse-pounding blockbuster with a foxy leading lady, but director Jaume Collet-Serra takes the higher ground. Early on, there’s some lingering shots of Lively’s athletic body, but once the shark comes into the picture, the director turns his focus to survival alone.
With perhaps the best intentions, Anthony Jaswinski attempts to write some depth into the character, but his script is weak and overreliant on emotional crutches. The completely superfluous epilogue is the most cringe-worthy moment: Lively’s pathos carries the film so well that the forced finale is near insulting.
The Shallows is at its strongest when Lively has to step up and battle more pressing concerns. Collet-Serra and Jaswinski make the most of key set-pieces in this game of cat and mouse: in one garish sequence, Lively is stranded on the back of a dying whale. Things get even more gruesome when Lively has to perform makeshift surgery on a deep bite, but outside of that, the film is mostly gore-free. After all, Collet-Serra knows he can induce revulsion merely by focusing on Lively’s face as she sees an unfortunate soul devoured.
The whole ordeal is magnificently lensed by Flavio Martínez Labiano, the team’s greatest asset. The credit sequence alone is enough to recommend the cinematographer’s colour-drenched mastery, and he captures Lively’s desperation and physical prowess (she did most of the surfing and stunts herself) with great care and finesse.
The same can not be said for the effects team, whose CGI beastie is unbearably fake. When it’s seen in silhouette, it produces chills; obscurity lends it an air of menace that it doesn’t possess in full view.
When The Shallows embraces the absurdity of its premise, it’s joyous. One crucial moment at the end produced whoops and applause from the audience, as did Nancy’s strangely accommodating seagull companion Steve.
Though it flounders when trying to dive deep, The Shallows succeeds as an entertaining genre flick executed with technical flair and loving touches of B-grade gratuity.
The Shallows is in cinemas Thursday August 18.
