The Shallows: Movie Predictions Issue #5

The Shallows: Movie Predictions Issue #5

There’s a movie coming out next week that has steadily become one of my most-anticipated of the summer. Much like the case with 10 Cloverfield Lane earlier this year, I had no idea it was even coming out until only a couple months ago. 

The Shallows is about a surfer, played by Blake Lively, who gets attacked by a great white shark and ends up stranded on a rock isle. She’s injured, the shark is circling, and the tide is coming up, so she has to figure out a way to get back to shore and escape, or she’s going to end up in the belly of the beast. A simple premise, with some potential for greatness, and even more potential for failure.  

The very first teaser trailer barely showed anything, which I liked, but it gave the basic premise that I’ve summed up above, and it was enough to intrigue me, but the next trailer revealed there’s a bit more to the plot than just Blake Lively trying to survive a shark, though I still expect that to be what the bulk of the movie is about. I haven’t watched any other trailers or clips, to avoid having any more of it spoiled, because that first full trailer sold me on the movie. 

Last October I reviewed 31 movies about killer animals—some of them good, many of them bad—but one I didn’t cover was Jaws, and that’s simply because everyone’s heard of Jaws and it is, without any doubt, the best movie ever made to feature a man-eating animal. It’s also the most well-known movie about a killer shark, and is so well-done and holds up so incredibly well, no one has ever made another killer shark movie that has even come close to living up to it. 

So will The Shallows be the first killer shark movie in cinematic history to rival Jaws? At first, my instantaneous reaction was NO. I heard the concept and thought it was going to suck. Shark movies always suck, especially lately, with garbage like Sharknado and Sharktopus being pumped out by the SyFy channel every summer, and a total lack of big-budget, studio-released shark movies. But, after seeing the full trailer and thinking about it some more, I’m starting to wonder if this might actually not be a bad movie.

First off, it appears to be very well directed. The cinematography looks great, and most impressive is actually the shark itself. Of course it’s being rendered in cgi, but it’s easily the best-looking cgi shark I’ve ever seen, even though it’s only shown in brief clips in the trailers. And that’s what I’m hoping it will be like in the actual movie: only glimpsed here and there, and not shown too much. I don’t know who the director is, but then again, no one knew who the director of Jaws was when it first came out either, and look where that guy ended up.   

The majority of killer shark movies (and killer animal movies in general) are made extremely cheap, often for TV or direct-to-video, with bad acting, bad special effects, and recycled plot elements (mostly recycled from Jaws). But what The Shallows seems to be featuring is the total opposite of that. I haven’t seen Blake Lively in a lead role, so I don’t know how well she’ll be able to carry the movie, but at least she’s an established actress and not some no-name. The special effects look really good, and the shark looks vicious. 

I’m a little surprised it’s only PG-13, but lately I’ve seen some pretty graphic violence in PG-13 movies, so maybe an R-rating isn’t warranted. I just hope it doesn’t feel restrained or censored in the gore department. Sure, the plot sounds simplistic, but often with these gritty, realistic survival movies, like 127 Hours or The Grey or Castaway, simple works best.

I have a feeling there won’t be any middle ground with the quality of this movie. It’s either going to be really great, or really bad, I’ll be surprised if it’s mediocre. I don’t expect it to achieve the cinematic brilliance of Jaws, I’m just hoping it’ll be a solid survival thriller with some scares, a convincing shark, and a compelling character; in other words, better than the average killer animal/killer shark movie.