THE SHALLOWS : Thursday 18th August 2016.

'THE SHALLOWS' which I saw on its opening day in Australia joins Steven Spielberg's seminal 'Jaws' which lurched on to our screens, sub-consciousness and popular culture back in 1975, together with it seems a wave of shark disaster movies year on year every year since, with the likes of several sequels following, and derivatives including 'Deep Blue Sea', 'Open Water', 'The Reef', 'Dark Tide', 'Jurassic Shark' and the more recent 'Sharknado' franchise to name but a few. Just when we thought it was safe to get back in the water, along comes another shark gore fest involving a secluded idyllic beach, a bikini-clad surfing maiden and a monster shark intent on a lunchtime snack of that bikini-clad damsel in distress. It's an easy premise that any Screenwriter could conjure up, and here we have Spanish Director, Jaume Collet-Serra making 'The Shallows' for a meagre US$17M and so far returning US$85M since its US release at the end of June, with what is, it must be said, a very respectable addition to the canon.

Here Blake Lively plays Nancy Adams a medical student, still mourning the recent death of her mother. She decides to take some time out and travels to a secluded beach somewhere down Mexico way, where her mother surfed at whilst expecting Nancy (New South Wales and Lord Howe Island, doubling for Mexico). We join Nancy as she is travelling in a car through the bush en route to said secluded beach with a friendly local, Carlos (Oscar Jaenada) trying to spark up a disjointed conversation with her driver in broken English. Whilst driving she is talking to her travelling companion over the phone who is back in civilisation at their hotel nursing a hangover from the night before and not in the mood for surfing. The pair reach their secret beach destination, and it seems like an idyllic spot. Carlos bids Nancy farewell, and asks how she will get back, but she tells him not to worry, she'll be fine (yeah right!). He drives off, living fairly close by it seems.

It's a perfect day at the beach, Nancy has found the paradise that her beloved Mum told her about, the skies are blue, the water clear and the surf is up. In the water are two local lads and other than that the beach is deserted. After suiting up and waxing down her board Nancy heads off into the ocean to catch some waves, chatting with the two surfer dudes and spending the afternoon making the most of the idyllic conditions. As the afternoon wears on the lads come in, spent for the day and they bid their farewell to Nancy who just wants to catch once last wave for the day. Now she is alone, and in the water a few hundred metres off from the shoreline.

Unexpectedly Nancy is bumped from beneath the surf by a Great White Shark whose attention had been drawn to the area by the corpse of a Humpback Whale floating nearby which Nancy went to check out. Seeing Nancy as a threat to its easy food supply, the shark attacks biting at her leg sending the lone surfer beneath the surface as the water all around her turns crimson. In her panic she swims for the only safe place - the decaying body of the whale, and scrambles up on to its upturned carcass. By now the shark is mightily pissed off and charges the whale with all its fierce might and up turning it so sending Nancy careering into the water. The other surfer lads had alerted Nancy earlier in the day to a small reef that becomes exposed at low tide, and seeing the exposed rocky outcrop she hastily makes for there and some temporary safe haven to nurse her badly shredded leg.

Being a medical student, Nancy is able to improvise and create a tourniquet from her leg strap, stitch up the deep gashes in her leg using jewellery, and create a compression bandage using the arm of her wet suit which she rips off with her teeth. Resourceful girl! There she remains as the tide continues to go out and nightfall draws ever closer. The shark however, continues to circle menacingly. All night she remains stranded on that small rock with only an injured seagull for company, which she affectionately calls Steven (Steven Seagull, geddit?).

As the new day dawns, we are alerted on screen to the number of hours before high tide, by which time the safety of her rock will disappear under the waves, calling for Plan B. That morning coming round in a semi-conscious state Nancy spies a man sleeping on the beach. She calls out to him several times. The man awakes from a drunken stupor, and makes out a distant figure standing on a rock yelling something at him. He spies Nancy's back pack on the beach and proceeds to steal her phone, her cash and the pack before spying her board floating close to the shore line. He thinks he'll make off with that too and wades in to retrieve it. Nancy tries to alert him about the presence of a shark but he pays no heed. Before you know, he's bitten in half, literally! Later that morning the two surfer dudes from the day before reappear ready to catch another day of perfect waves. They jump in the water and begin to paddle out. Again, Nancy from the safety of her rock tries to warn them, but before you know it . . . shark bait!

With three men down, and Nancy's hope for survival dwindling, she spies floating in the water the helmet and Go-Pro camera of one of the surfer dudes. It's close enough that she can just about retrieve it. She does so after some near misses with the shark and views the graphic footage of the shark attack that took the life of the helmets owner. She then uses the camera to record her final message to her father and sister in Texas before tossing back the helmet into the water in the hope that it will be washed ashore and retrieved, and rescue might possibly come, knowing too that the tide is rising steadily around her. Close by however, is a marker buoy, that might offer some salvation if she can reach it in time before another attack by the shark. To reach it though means swimming through a smack of jellyfish which would not only sting her, but the shark too, causing enough of a deterrent to buy Nancy the time to make it to the buoy.

Using a flare gun retrieved from the buoy, Nancy is able to shoot off a round into the leaching blubber from the whale carcass which ignites the sea in flame, and the approaching shark too, which as a result is even more pissed off now! Furiously the shark attacks the buoy and is relentless in doing so time after time until there is little left of the rusting metal construction. The chains securing the buoy to the ocean bed are dislodged and when these finally break free after another attack Nancy allows herself to be pulled down with the weight of the descending metal. The shark follows in hot pursuit with its jaws of death biting at Nancy's heels. Using some quick thinking and evasive tactics, Nancy turns at just the right time to allow for the sharks forward momentum to impale itself on the metal rods protruding from the buoy's mooring turning the shark killer into killer sushi! Well, almost!

I quite enjoyed 'The Shallows' because like 'Jaws' it is grounded in a realism that we can all relate too, unlike many others in the horror shark genre. For its lean 88 minute running time, the film has a number of jump scares, the body count while low is effective and well delivered and there is a believable story here with characters that we can adhere to. The shark FX are reasonably well delivered, there is suspense and atmosphere, and Blake Lively puts in a good turn as a simple Texas lass from Galveston subjected to extraordinary circumstances in complete isolation. This is the 'Jaws' for a whole new generation, and as such worthy of the price of entry.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-