The Shallows Movie Review 459

The Shallows is a 2016 horror movie directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Blake Lively.

Nancy Adams(Lively) is a medical student who travels to Mexico after her mother's death. She goes to a beach which was the same beach that her mother came to when she was pregnant with Nancy.
She gets a lift with a guy called Carlos. He takes her to the beach and leaves. She heads off surfing and meets two guys who surf with her. She chats to her dad on her phone and there is some side story about her dad wanting her home. Then, she goes back out for another surf and she sees a huge whale but it is dead. She stays in the water and she gets bitten by a shark.

She pulls herself on to a rock and she tries to stop the bleeding with her medical skills. She gets stuck on the rock overnight and she has a seagull for company. She sees a local drunkard on the beach and she thinks that he might help her,but he rips her off and takes her stuff. He wades into the water to get her surfboard and becomes food for the shark. The two guys come back to the beach for more surfing and she tries to warn them about the shark, but they don't know what she is saying. They get killed by the shark. One of them was wearing a camera on a helmet and she grabs it and records a message on it in case someone finds it.

Nancy knows that time is running out as the tide is high and her rock will be underwater. She is a sitting duck and the shark is still out there. She sees a buoy and she wants to swim out there. She has to go and she does so. She reaches it and thinks that she might be safe, but the shark is circling.
She finds a flare gun and shoots it in the sky, but it does nothing. She saves her last one for the shark and she shoots at it but it is not deterred. It comes back and it tries to rock the buoy. This is one smart shark! The buoy is starting to come apart and she knows that she will fall off soon and the shark is waiting. She falls into the water and she dives down. The shark is after her but it gets impaled on some spikes and dies. A young boy finds the camera that she had and he calls his dad, Carlos who had given her the lift in the beginning. He helps her and she is fine. The movie ends with Nancy, her dad and her sister surfing in Texas. She has a scar on her leg, but she has survived.

This was a very good film. I liked the tension throughout. It was certainly like Jaws or Piranha in that it was a person against a very aggressive fish! The shark is very clever in this, it seems. It seems to know what she is thinking but apart from that, this is well made and fun. I recommend this to any movie fans. I will give it a 7/10.