Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The Shallows


The premise of THE SHALLOWS is about as simple as you can get: Blake Lively plays a surfer who's attacked by a shark off an isolated Mexican beach and has to take shelter on some rocks that are only exposed at low tide. She has to figure out a way to get to shore a couple of hundred yards away before the tide comes back in, without getting eaten by the shark. There's a little bit of back-story for the character, but not much. Otherwise this is a pure woman-against-nature yarn. If the protagonist was a guy instead of a girl, it could have been a story in a men's adventure magazine from the Sixties.

THE SHALLOWS is a really suspenseful movie. It's not quite an hour and a half long, but it seems longer because it's so intense. At one point Livia said, "This is worse than JAWS!" I replied, "Yeah, at least they had a boat—although they needed a bigger one." It's not a better film than JAWS, mind you, but it is pretty darned good. When we go to the coast, I generally don't get in any water deeper than my ankles anyway, and I think I'll continue that.

1 comment:

Peter Brandvold said...

Definitely not as good as JAWS, but then Richard Dreyfuss wouldn't have looked anywhere near as good in that yellow bikini!