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| Nancy kicks it with Steven Seagull while she figures things out. |
Dir. Jaume
Collet-Serra
A touching family tearjerker bookends this creature-feature
about surfer-cum-medical student, Nancy Adams (Blake Lively), who travels to a secluded beach in Mexico to catch
the perfect wave and cope with her mother’s recent passing.
It’s an idyllic locale—Australia’s Gold Coast subbing
picture-postcard-perfectly for the Mexican shoreline—and Nancy is as tough as
she is smart, let alone athletic and lithe (not a little bit due to
body-double, Sarah Friend).
A convincingly CG’d great white and gorgeous-yet-lethal cove
conspire to give Nancy the battle of her life, a contest that pits woman
against nature. The taut ride is paved
with jump-scares and gut wrenching instants, such as each time Nancy comes crashing
into razor-sharp coral, or when she uses her gold earrings to staple together
one of her wounds. As a heroine she’s
quite resourceful, later even making good with a stray shark tooth.
A seagull (Steven
Seagull in the film though his real name is Sully) plays an unexpectedly prescient supporting role, enough to
infer that its white, feathery form represents maternal encouragement from the
other side, a theme that concretizes when Nancy’s mom appears to her in a
passing but powerful vision. Has an animal ever been nominated for an Academy Award?
Although it’s visceral to watch, The Shallows is never unnecessarily gory; suffice to say many
summer beach vacations will have been ruined as a result.
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