THE SHALLOWS
Image: Nancy (Blake Lively)
Just when you thought it would be idyllic to get back to the beach after a long miserable winter, along comes a ‘B grade’ feature which should ensure movie-goers stay out of the water and in the safety of darkened cinemas.
This chilling story of human endurance and the desperate fight for survival is simplistic. While surfing on a desolate Mexican beach, a bikini clad surfer (Blake Lively) seeks refuge on a reef from a killer shark and has only five hours until high tide diminishes her chance of survival.
Produced on a relatively small budget in Australia, this is an engaging and genuinely terrifying film with realistic shark attack sequences and blood splattering ‘self-applied’ medical procedures which may be unsettling.
The storylines are highly improbable, but the credible performance by Lively and the ongoing scare tactics mandatory to this style of films will keep audiences at the edge of their seats.
Ultimately, audiences will humorously question why these killer sharks continually menace the protagonist in films of this genre when there’s evident food supplies in the surrounding waters, and especially after having devoured so many other unfortunate bystanders. (MMo)
★★★1/2
