The Shallows (15.)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge. 85 mins.
The Shallows is basically the opening skinny dip scene in Jaws made into a whole movie: a woman disrobes on a deserted beach and gets attacked by a shark. The woman here is Blake Lithely and we are encouraged to admire the length and slenderness of her limbs, even when one of them is going gangrenous after a shark bite. The admiration of desirable objects and locations is a fundamental component of the film. Normally American teenager get chopped up and traumatised in crummy backwoods cabins but Blake gets tormented on a beautiful, remote Mexican beach, free of any riff raff, and with all the best surfing equipment. At the start, the film flirts with a bit of found footage horror, but the footage is filmed on one of those GoPro camera. There is nothing rough or ready in this film, everything is shot immaculately. It's like an advert for Jeep or Bacardi where glamorous, rich youngsters cross the world having an immaculate existence, so much better than your wretched life where the concept of exotic and excitement is finding that it's two for £5 on Hoegaarden at Tesco's this week.
The Shallows is trying to resurrect a trend that was popular up to about half a decade ago which was the micro-cast one-location mini horror: Ryan Reynolds buried in a box, three people stuck on a ski lift, two people left in the middle of the shark filled ocean. In The Shallows she ends up on a rock that is above the water unless it is high tide. Such film are exercises in dragging stuff out. Shallows is less than the regulation 90 minutes and when you think about how much of it is in slow motion the running time may be barely an hour and a quarter. In these films it is important to adhere to the reality of the single location, but the film is haphazard with the levels of the rising tide, and continuity issues abound
I think all these films tended to leave audiences feeling short changed. Open Water, the one where a scuba diving couple were left behind in shark infested water wasn't much of a film but it stayed with you, because there was something abrupt and cruel and poignant to it. The Shallows is slickly filmed, the shark looks very real but there's no great jeopardy to it because you suspect that the camera has pored too lovingly over Lively to let her die.
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge. 85 mins.
The Shallows is basically the opening skinny dip scene in Jaws made into a whole movie: a woman disrobes on a deserted beach and gets attacked by a shark. The woman here is Blake Lithely and we are encouraged to admire the length and slenderness of her limbs, even when one of them is going gangrenous after a shark bite. The admiration of desirable objects and locations is a fundamental component of the film. Normally American teenager get chopped up and traumatised in crummy backwoods cabins but Blake gets tormented on a beautiful, remote Mexican beach, free of any riff raff, and with all the best surfing equipment. At the start, the film flirts with a bit of found footage horror, but the footage is filmed on one of those GoPro camera. There is nothing rough or ready in this film, everything is shot immaculately. It's like an advert for Jeep or Bacardi where glamorous, rich youngsters cross the world having an immaculate existence, so much better than your wretched life where the concept of exotic and excitement is finding that it's two for £5 on Hoegaarden at Tesco's this week.
The Shallows is trying to resurrect a trend that was popular up to about half a decade ago which was the micro-cast one-location mini horror: Ryan Reynolds buried in a box, three people stuck on a ski lift, two people left in the middle of the shark filled ocean. In The Shallows she ends up on a rock that is above the water unless it is high tide. Such film are exercises in dragging stuff out. Shallows is less than the regulation 90 minutes and when you think about how much of it is in slow motion the running time may be barely an hour and a quarter. In these films it is important to adhere to the reality of the single location, but the film is haphazard with the levels of the rising tide, and continuity issues abound
I think all these films tended to leave audiences feeling short changed. Open Water, the one where a scuba diving couple were left behind in shark infested water wasn't much of a film but it stayed with you, because there was something abrupt and cruel and poignant to it. The Shallows is slickly filmed, the shark looks very real but there's no great jeopardy to it because you suspect that the camera has pored too lovingly over Lively to let her die.
