The Shallows (2016) Review

The Shallows was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (who also directed Orphan and House of Wax) and stars Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada (from The Valdemar Legacy, Somne) and Brett Cullen (from Beneath the Darkness). It’s about a girl who gets stranded at sea, within view of the beach, but can’t reach it due to a hungry shark.

What was once in the deep is now in the shallows.

Awhile back I watched a movie called Frozen (no, not the Disney musical) in which three friends get accidentally stranded on a ski lift for days and have to fight for survival. I went into it thinking it was going to be a mild PG-13 style survival flick. Well, it turned out to be crazy brutal and disturbing. I can still see Parker’s face skin peeling off on the frozen metal bar after accidentally falling asleep and catching a serious case of frost bite. Then I saw the trailer for The Shallows and it gave me the same vibe, stranded while surfing instead of snowboarding, count me in!

Well, instead of the crazy brutal survival movie the trailer promised I got the mild PG-13 style survival flick that I thought Frozen was going to be. The Shallows is like a cross between 127 Hours (a movie where a guy gets stuck in the desert and has to fight for survival) and Jaws. At first, I thought it was going to be more like 47 Meters Down (a movie about two girls who get stuck underwater and have to fight for survival), but that movie was surprisingly more realistic. The shark in The Shallows was just way too aggressive and persistent (and fireproof believe it or not).

I really wanted to like this movie, but there were simply way too many things that were way too unrealistic. I’d list them all out here, but it would be a long list that would spoil it for anyone planning to watch it.

Now with that all being said, it was actually an entertaining movie. There’s a lot of action, some great shark kills, polished cinematography and the pacing was perfect, things are happening from start to finish. It’s not a bad movie at all, it just didn’t have the bite I was hoping for.