Over the course of motion picture history, we’ve seen a shark fight a zombie, a shark fight a giant octopus, a shark fight the thinly veiled stand-ins for the cast of The Jersey Shore, a shark fight a crocosaurus, a shark fight a mechashark and a shark fight Gamera the turtle monster. So Blake Lively doesn’t seem like all that much of a threat, but filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra more or less makes it work in his new thriller The Shallows.
Lively plays a surfer who travels to an isolated beach. She accidentally pisses off a great white shark and winds up wounded and stranded on a small rock for several days while the shark keeps circling… and circling… and circling…
It’s a simple premise that, rather predictably, turns out to be a rather simple movie. Blake Lively tries something clever but it doesn’t quite work. It looks like someone might be able to help her but then they get eaten by the shark. Blake Lively questions the futility of her existence. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the badass shark-fightin’ climax.
Columbia Pictures
There’s no denying that The Shallows whiles away a summer afternoon as effectively as any b-movie thriller. Blake Lively carries the whole movie more-or-less by herself (well, a seagull helps for while), and she convincingly plays out one physically torturous situation after another. Meanwhile, Jaume Collet-Serra films the whole thing with the sort of gorgeous cinematography that’s usually only reserved for a Terrence Malick movie. The Shallows gives off the weird impression that it’s one of those surfing montage videos they play at Islands restaurants, but on steroids and with a killer shark in it. And that’s a strange selling point, but a selling point nonetheless.
The Shallows would have worked just fine as a low-concept killer shark movie, but the film’s screenplay throws in a sort of Diet Gravity theme about the importance of persevering, even the face of certain doom. It never quite has the same emotional impact as Gravity Classic but it doesn’t feel false either, and in a film that mostly consists of a beautiful woman in a swimsuit trying not to get eaten by a giant fish, I think they deserve a few points for trying to add something thoughtful and human.
There are better killer shark movies than The Shallows (and there are killer shark movies that are gloriously worse), but Jaume Collet-Serra’s film is toothsome enough to be worth watching. It might not be safe to go back in the ocean, but in the theater, the water’s just fine.
11 Great Beach Movies for Summer:
Top Photo: Columbia Pictures
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
11 Great Beach Movies for Summer
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Into the Blue (2005)
No serious discussion of beach movies would be complete without one mention of John Stockwell, the actor-turned-director who spent half his career making thrillers about bikini-clad heroes. Blue Crush is an audience favorite, and Turistas is fun for horror fans, but his 2005 The Deep knock-off Into the Blue is his pièce de résistance. Jessica Alba and Paul Walker never looked hotter than when they searched for sunken treasure, and the shockingly violent climax is genuinely disarming.
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Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)
Surf movies don't get much stranger than this cult classic Troma flick, in which the grandmother of a black murder victim leaps onto her motorcycle to take revenge on a vicious gang of Surf Nazis. The surfing footage is actually pretty impressive, probably because 2nd Unit D.P. Dan Merkel also worked on Big Wednesday and Endless Summer II. But it's the goofy sense of humor that makes Surf Nazis Must Die into a scuzzy b-movie classic. A switchblade surfboard? Really?
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Psycho Beach Party (2000)
Based on the off-Broadway play, Robert Lee King's Psycho Beach Party is an affectionate homage to 1960s beach party movies and psychodramas, with a hint of 1980s slasher movie for good measure. Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) stars as "Chicklet," a naive beach bunny who suffers from blackouts and may be the serial killer stalking a beach full of studs and nymphets, including a young Amy Adams (in one of her earliest roles). Psycho Beach Party has sexy, campy humor for the quirky movie lover in all over us.
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The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981)
One of the dumbest damned movies ever made is also one of the funnest. The TV movie The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island finds the original castaways feeling nostalgic for their tropic isle, so they open a resort there. Pretty soon The Harlem Globetrotters show up and have to play an epic basketball game against giant-headed robots. Stories don't get much sillier, but on a hot summer day, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island may be just the beach movie you're looking for.
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Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello became motion picture legends for their many groovy beach party movies in the 1960s. They appeared in nearly a dozen of these goofy movies, in which impossibly white people sang songs, drag raced with dopey leather gangs and fell in love over and over again, but the best is probably the fifth: Beach Blanket Bingo, in which Linda Evans guest stars, gets kidnapped, and Bonehead romances a mermaid. Good ol' Bonehead!
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Back to the Beach (1987)
Frankie and Annette returned in the absolutely lovable sequel Back to the Beach, in which they bring their own teenaged kids to shore and reclaim their old identities as the king and queen of summer. Pee-Wee Herman performs, Frankie Avalon surfs a tidal wave, and everyone on-screen and off has an absolutely wonderful time.
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Cast Away (2000)
Director Robert Zemeckis is known for his incredible visual effects, but the most impressive image he ever put on screen may very well be Tom Hanks, who took a one year break from filming Cast Away to lose 50 lbs., so as to better play a man stuck on a deserted island for many years. Hanks spends most of Cast Away acting opposite a volleyball, and you never stop to think twice about it. It's a harrowing and beautifully filmed film about survival at any cost.
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Point Break (1991)
"You're saying the FBI's gonna pay me to learn to surf?" They sure are, Johnny Utah, and it's going to be pretty danged cool. Keanu Reeves stars in Kathryn Bigelow's cheesy action movie classic as a fed going undercover with extreme sports bank robbers, led by a zen guru named Bodhi, played to sexy perfection by Patrick Swayze. Our heroes and villains take time away from the beach to skydive, but the typhoon of a finale cements Point Break as one of the great beach movies of all time.
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Lilo & Stitch (2002)
No one thought much of Lilo & Stitch when it first came out in 2002, but this unlikely story of an alien monster using a Hawaiian girl as a human shield gradually built a reputation as one of Disney's best animated films of the 21st Century. With good cause: the humor is subversive and funny, the emotions are devastating, and the fabulous Hawaiian backdrop comes to life with gorgeous colors, memorable music and a heaping helping of local culture.
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From Here to Eternity (1953)
Fred Zinneman's incredible Best Picture Oscar-winning drama From Here to Eternity tells the intense story of American soldiers stationed on Oahu in the days preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor. Frank Sinatra won a richly deserved Academy Award as the ill-fated Private Maggio, but the scene that went down in history is Burt Lancaster's sexy surf side frolic with Deborah Kerr. It's still one of the most romantic images ever filmed.
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Jaws (1975)
The best beach movie ever made is also the film that will make you never, ever want to visit the beach again. Steven Spielberg's Jaws adapts Peter Benchley's novel about a seaside resort plagued by a giant Great White Shark, and the men who risk life and limb to rid the island of Amity from its menace once and for all. Groundbreaking, suspenseful as hell, and packed with unforgettable performances (not to mention John Williams' iconic music), Jaws is the movie we all think of as we take that first perilous step into the water, hoping for the best.
