Fame is a fickle mistress. Why only a month ago we couldn't get enough of Tom Hiddleston and now all of a sudden he's become rather too much. Guys like Tom can only dream of the kind of eternal appeal held by the shark: predator, icon, cinematic gold!
The latest shark to hit the big screen is an angry Mexican great white with a taste for smug surfers. Cleverly, the trailer for The Shallows leaves pretty much everything to the imagination, so here I'll do the same. Simply put, a young surfer called Nancy (Blake Lively) becomes stranded and injured on a stony patch of shallow land right in the middle of the feeding ground of a great white. As the tide comes in, Nancy moves closer and closer to becoming fish food.
This simple, unpretentious concept makes The Shallows something of a breath of fresh air in a summer season that has been dominated by bloated blockbusters. Director Jaume Collet-Serra, best known for the equally entertaining Non-Stop, has the good sense to keep things fast and tight. The addition of a countdown to high tide gives a nice sense of jeopardy to events and it all shoots along at a fine pace.
Blake Lively carries the film and does a very good job indeed – she convinces as a gutsy, resourceful woman who could definitely hold her own against the worst that Mother Nature could throw at her. And what about the shark? Well, film technology has transformed utterly since Steven Spielberg gave his own creation the interesting nickname of “The Great White Turd,” thanks to the difficulty they had in moving the physical model around in the water. The Shallows has modern CGI at its fingertips and for the majority of the film, the shark looks fantastic as it soundlessly glides through the shallow waters; it is only in the final, more action-packed sequences that it becomes a little less convincing.
Nevertheless, having been scarred by Jaws at a young age, I will always find sharks utterly terrifying and The Shallows provides a few good scares. This is the kind of silly popcorn fun that befits the summer season.